Skip to main content

Episode 10: From Refugee to Radical

The Story of Eva Kollisch

Eva Kollisch.jpg
Photograph of Eva Kollisch. From the Margarete Kollisch Collection, AR 25058, box 1, folder 11, Leo Baeck Institute.

When a young Eva Kollisch arrives as a refugee in New York in 1940, she finds a community among socialists who share her values and idealism. She soon discovers "the cause" isn’t as idyllic as it seems. Little does she know this is the beginning of a lifelong commitment to activism and her determination to create radical change in ways that include belonging, love, and one's full self.

In addition to Eva Kollisch’s memoirs Girl in Movement (2000) and The Ground Under My Feet (2014), LBI’s collections include an oral history interview with Eva conducted in 2014 and the papers of Eva’s mother, poet Margarete Kolllisch, which document Eva’s childhood experience on the Kindertransport.

Exile is a production of LBI New York | Berlin and Antica Productions.

It’s narrated by Mandy Patinkin.

Executive Producers include Katrina Onstad, Stuart Coxe, and Bernie Blum. Senior Producer is Debbie Pacheco. Associate Producers are Hailey Choi and Emily Morantz. Research and translation by Isabella Kempf. Sound design and audio mix by Philip Wilson, with help from Cameron McIver. Theme music by Oliver Wickham. Voice acting by Natalia Bushnik.

Special thanks to the Kollisch family for the use of Eva’s two memoirs, Girl in Movement and The Ground Under My Feet, the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College and their “Voices of Feminism Oral History Project”, and Soundtrack New York.

Want more about Eva Kollisch?

In 2020, the LBI Book Club read and discussed The Ground Under My Feet with Katharina Menschik, a former Archival Assistant at LBI. In the video below, Menschik provided a short introduction to Kollisch's biography.


We bring you the sad news of the passing of Eva Kollisch on October 10th, 2023, at the age of 98. You may read more about her life's work in this New York Times article.