As we prepare our fifth season of Exile, we’re looking back at our favorite episodes from seasons 1-4. Each re-release brings back a unique, fascinating, and often heart-wrenching story from the Leo Baeck Institute Archives. Robert Bachrach is a buttoned-up doctor and dedicated researcher. Leo Hochner is a bon-vivant and art connoisseur who breeds small dogs. Both bachelors, they are part of a close network of friends from Vienna who are scattered across the globe after the Nazis take power in A...
Apr 29, 2025•37 min
As we prepare our fifth season of Exile, we’re looking back at our favorite episodes from seasons 1-4. Each re-release brings back a unique, fascinating, and often heart-wrenching story from the Leo Baeck Institute Archives. Leo Fuks is a born performer. So when, in 1936, a vaudeville impresario shows up to recruit him, 10-year-old Leo is more than happy to join his troupe, and his parents reluctantly agree. As Leo, now known as Jackie Gerlich, travels the world and dips his toes into Hollywood,...
Apr 22, 2025•33 min
As we prepare our fifth season of Exile, we’re looking back at our favorite episodes from seasons 1-4. Each re-release brings back a unique, fascinating, and often heart-wrenching story from the Leo Baeck Institute Archives. Known for her candid talk and blunt advice about sex, Dr. Ruth Westheimer is the world’s most renowned psychosexual therapist. But beneath her joyful demeanor is a chaotic story about her youth—a girl named Karola Ruth Siegel left orphaned and stateless. How does she harness...
Apr 15, 2025•45 min
As we prepare our fifth season of Exile, we’re looking back at our favorite episodes from seasons 1-4. Each re-release brings back a unique, fascinating, and often heart-wrenching story from the Leo Baeck Institute Archives. In Nazi-occupied Austria, a young man named Kurt Kleinmann comes up with a plan to escape: write to Americans - strangers - who share his last name and ask for help to get a visa. Just as he begins to lose hope, he gets a response from New Yorker Helen Kleinman. Little does ...
Apr 08, 2025•37 min
As we prepare our fifth season of Exile, we’re looking back at our favorite episodes from seasons 1-4. Each re-release brings back a unique, fascinating, and often heart-wrenching story from the Leo Baeck Institute Archives. At the height of his fame, a shirtless, barefooted Albert Einstein escapes the bustle of Berlin for a simpler life. The best thinkers of the time gather at his beloved summer house in Caputh to laze by the water, swap ideas, and gossip. There, he can escape the pressures of ...
Apr 01, 2025•32 min
As we prepare our fifth season of Exile, we’re looking back at our favorite episodes from seasons 1-4. Each re-release brings back a unique, fascinating, and often heart-wrenching story from the Leo Baeck Institute Archives. A young, Jewish librarian in New York named Florence Mendheim risks her life to spy on the growing Nazi movement in America. She passes herself off as a Nazi sympathizer, documenting the movement’s nefarious activities. Everything is on the line—her family, her work and her ...
Mar 25, 2025•41 min
At the dawn of the 1930s, Germany is a physics powerhouse, where great minds like Albert Einstein and Max Planck have revolutionized the scientific landscape. But a talented young physicist named Trude Goldhaber struggles to make her voice heard in a male-dominated field. Trude perseveres, despite the pressures of antisemitism and misogyny all around her. Forced to work in the shadow of her scientist husband, she contributes to research and discoveries that help create the most dangerous weapon ...
Feb 25, 2025•39 min•Season 4Ep. 6
For Karl Adler, there is nothing more powerful than music. While recovering from an injury sustained as a soldier in World War I, Karl pursues his goal of changing the way music is taught in Germany. And for a while, he’s successful – until a former student (and member of Hitler’s Brownshirts) falsely reports him for sexual harassment. Forced to start over, Karl devotes himself to creating a new cultural association for German Jews. As antisemitic laws take hold and Jews begin to flee Germany en...
Feb 18, 2025•33 min•Season 4Ep. 5
The Simson family business has been manufacturing everything from firearms to vehicles for decades. But when the Nazis take over, they’re not happy to learn that a Jewish family is supplying weapons to the German army. After a new law forces the Simsons to relinquish their company to the Nazis, the family flees to the United States. Fifty years later, a Simson descendent makes his way back to Germany – and finds out what became of the business empire his family once led. The LBI Archives hold mu...
Feb 11, 2025•30 min•Season 4Ep. 4
Hilde Mosse comes from one of the wealthiest families in Berlin and stands to inherit an enormous fortune. But she longs for something more meaningful than the luxurious lifestyle her family provides. So Hilde decides to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. As the Nazis take power in Germany and the Mosse family is forced to flee, Dr. Hilde Mosse lands in New York having nearly lost everything.. She finds her calling treating the mental health of Black youth – and the symptoms of a racist syst...
Feb 04, 2025•35 min•Season 4Ep. 3
Jacob Jacobson dedicates his life to archiving the history of Jews in Germany. For years, nobody pays much attention—until the Nazis take power. Suddenly, Jacobson’s meticulous research is being used to destroy the people whose history he wanted to preserve. Unwittingly, Jacobson has also become an invaluable asset to the Nazis. Can he protect himself without betraying his community? One of the most extensive collections in the LBI Archives, the Jacob Jacobson collection includes former holdings...
Jan 28, 2025•31 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Carola’s dream is to be a dancer. In 1935, she moves from Germany to Paris to pursue a career on stage. But as a young, Jewish performer, Carola struggles with a lack of fulfilling work, dwindling funds, and a rising tide of antisemitism. Carola’s strong will carries her through the perils of Nazi-occupied France, losing the love of her life, and the long journey to America – where she finds a new passion that becomes her greatest legacy. The Carola Trier Collection in the LBI Archives includes ...
Jan 21, 2025•41 min•Season 4Ep. 1
For years, Emma Haas and Helene Krämer have been the dedicated stewards of the Neu Isenburg Home, a sanctuary for orphaned Jewish children and vulnerable women. When the devastating events of Kristallnacht leave the home in ruins, Emma and Helene must find a way to protect the people in their care—and to escape the looming Nazi threat themselves. Learn more at www.lbi.org/isenburg . Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York and Antica Productions. It’s narrated by Mandy Patinkin...
Aug 20, 2024•32 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Robert Bachrach is a buttoned-up doctor and dedicated researcher. Leo Hochner is a bon-vivant and art connoisseur who breeds small dogs. Both bachelors, they are part of a close network of friends from Vienna who are scattered across the globe after the Nazis take power in Austria. When Robert takes his life in New York after a humiliating arrest under New York’s anti-gay laws, he directs his final words to Leo, who was still trapped in Nazi-occupied Budapest. We follow the traces they left in t...
Aug 13, 2024•37 min•Season 3Ep. 5
To Samson Schames, art is everything. When fleeing the Nazis lands him in an English internment camp for enemy aliens, he doesn’t let the squalid conditions curb his creativity—in fact, he thrives. Using the debris of destruction as material for his work, Samson cultivates an artistic vision that captures the horrors of war unlike any other. Learn more at www.lbi.org/schames . Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York and Antica Productions. It’s narrated by Mandy Patinkin. This...
Aug 06, 2024•35 min•Season 3Ep. 4
In 1943, 13-year-old Zuzana Justman and her family are sent to Theresienstadt, a transit camp and ghetto in occupied Czechoslovakia. While the Nazis claim Theresienstadt was a model ghetto with a thriving cultural life, Zuzana and her family face starvation, illness, and fear of the mysterious transports that take her loved ones away, never to return. Learn more at www.lbi.org/justman . Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York and Antica Productions. It’s narrated by Mandy Pati...
Jul 30, 2024•41 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Leo Fuks is a born performer. So when, in 1936, a vaudeville impresario shows up to recruit him, 10-year-old Leo is more than happy to join his troupe, and his parents reluctantly agree. As Leo, now known as Jackie Gerlich, travels the world and dips his toes into Hollywood, his family is left behind to grapple with the terror of rising antisemitism in Vienna. After years without contact, Leo’s mother is shocked to see her son dancing on screen in The Wizard of Oz—and she resolves to do everythi...
Jul 23, 2024•33 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Exiled from her comfortable life in Vienna and left to fend for herself on the Kindertransport, Lily Renee Wilhelm has no idea what her future holds. She ends up in New York and, on a whim, applies to a comic book illustration job. She endures rampant sexism in the boys’ club atmosphere of the comics industry, but soon makes a name for herself as the illustrator of Senorita Rio, a comic series about a swashbuckling spy with a glamorous wardrobe. Decades later, she is remembered as an icon of the...
Jul 16, 2024•37 min•Season 3Ep. 1
In the Holy Roman Empire in the early 1500s, there was a campaign to burn all Jewish books. A legal scholar named Johannes Reuchlin wrote a pamphlet called Augenspiegel that convinced the powers-that-be that these texts had historical and scholarly value. Historian and author Erika Rummel joins Mark to tell this remarkable tale, which features everything from political power grabs to bribery to a Middle Ages version of a flame war. LBI Presents is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New Yor...
Mar 05, 2024•24 min
You may have heard of the transit camp Theresienstadt as a place of hope and resilience throughout the Holocaust. But the music, art , and recipes found in the Czech ghetto after the war only tell one part of the story. Today, historian Anna Hájková, author of The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt, joins Mark to discuss the complexities of life at Theresienstadt, including class structure, the barter system, and most importantly, food. LBI Presents is a production of the Leo Bae...
Feb 20, 2024•28 min
In 1933, Joseph Goebbels said that the Nazis could never have taken power without the radio. Heidi Tworek is a professor of history at the University of British Columbia and author of News From Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900-1945. On this episode, she joins Mark to tell the incredible story of how the Nazis broadcast their propaganda not just in Germany, but around the world. LBI Presents is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York | Berlin and Antica Pro...
Feb 06, 2024•32 min
In the 1960s, artist Eva Hesse found herself at the center of the iconic New York contemporary art scene. A Jewish refugee who escaped Austria on the Kindertransport as a toddler, Hesse went on to become an icon of post minimalist art. Elisabeth Sussman is a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art . She’s written and edited books about Hesse, and has curated exhibitions of her work. On this episode, Elisabeth and Mark discuss Hesse’s personal history, artistic style, and legacy. LBI Presen...
Jan 23, 2024•28 min
On this episode, we bring you two stories of people who unexpectedly unearthed their personal histories with the help of LBI and its archive. Danny Shot, a poet from the Bronx, stumbled across a familiar face at an LBI exhibit—and discovered the double life of a mysterious relative. And Elliot Aronstam, a Brooklyn native, found himself literally buried in letters in a script he couldn’t read. Luckily, LBI was able to decipher a family story he never thought he’d learn. LBI Presents is a producti...
Jan 09, 2024•27 min
The archive and library at LBI contains over 2000 memoirs. On this episode, Mark and literary critic Ruth Franklin, author of A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction , discuss the line between fact and fiction in memoir writing and the evolution of Holocaust memoirs from first hand accounts to books written by second and third generation authors. LBI Presents is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York | Berlin and Antica Productions . Hosted by Mark Oppenheimer. Exec...
Dec 19, 2023•30 min
Among the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who flooded out of Nazi Germany were countless artists, writers, and musicians . Alexis Rodda, an opera singer and music researcher, has devoted her career to studying just one of them: a composer named Egon Lustgarten. Today, Alexis and Mark discuss how exile impacted Lustgarten’s music—and how starting over in a new world changed a whole community of musicians, for better or for worse. LBI Presents is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, N...
Dec 05, 2023•22 min
The archive at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York is a real treasure trove. You’ll find everything from Albert Einstein’s childhood hot chocolate cups to amulets meant to protect you from demons. In this episode, Mark talks to Markus Krah, LBI’s Executive Director, on why preserving and showcases these amazing artifacts is more important than ever. But first, archivist Michael Simonson takes us on a ‘tour’ of the archive. LBI Presents is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York | Berlin ...
Nov 21, 2023•20 min
Many Jews scrambled to leave 1930s Germany and Austria, and ended up all over the world. Mark and historian Hasia Diner dive into the complexities of immigration during one of the most tumultuous moments of the 20th century - highlighting less discussed destinations like Shanghai, the Dominican Republic, and Kenya. LBI Presents is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York | Berlin and Antica Productions. Hosted by Mark Oppenheimer. Executive Producers include Laura Regehr, Stuart Coxe, a...
Nov 07, 2023•35 min
Love is one of the great constants of human history—and German Jews are no exception. LBI’s archive contains countless memoirs, letters , and diaries that demonstrate the complex romantic lives of German Jews going back centuries. In this episode, Mark Oppenheimer sits down with Christian Bailey, the author of German Jews in Love: A History. They touch on the transition from arranged marriages to love matches, the dynamic between mixed-faith couples in the 1930s, and how the Third Reich impacted...
Oct 24, 2023•28 min
LBI Presents is a new podcast from the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. It’s hosted by author and journalist Mark Oppenheimer. Mark chats with key experts as we dive into LBI’s vast archive and explore the remarkable lives and histories of German-speaking Jews…beyond the stories you already know. Join us as we bring history to life—and better understand ourselves through the lens of the past. Starting October 24, LBI Presents will be released bi-weekly every Tuesday. (LBI’s other podcast, Exile , ...
Oct 17, 2023•2 min
This marks the end of our second season of Exile . But if you happen to be in New York, please join us starting March 22, 2023 for the companion exhibit, Unpacking Exile . Explore the letters, personal documents, books and pictures that helped us tell these stories. Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute , New York | Berlin and Antica Productions ....
Mar 22, 2023•1 min
