Exile

It’s 1940. Western Europe is collapsing under Hitler’s onslaught. Famous Jewish dramaturg Kurt Hirschfeld flees to Switzerland. He forms a theatre collective that uses the stage to bravely rage against Hitler’s relentless war machine. But is it safe to be so daring, even after escaping Germany? The Kurt Hirschfeld Collection in the Archives of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York includes Kurt’s co...

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 global fame, but his summer haven can’t keep him safe from the growing Nazi movement bubbling in Germany.  The Albert Einstei...

Alice Urbach is the ‘Julia Child’ of Austria. When Hitler takes over, she flees, leaving everything behind, including the rights to her bestselling cookbook. Then the Nazis slap a German name on it. Decades after the War and Alice’s death, her granddaughters fight to restore her long-lost culinary legacy.  Along with Alice Urbach’s Cooking the Viennese Way! , the Library of the Leo Baeck Institute...

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 life—to try to halt hate in its tracks. As Nazism becomes a gathering storm, will she get out of the spy game before she’s ca...

Welcome to Exile, a podcast about Jewish lives under the shadow of fascism. Narrated by award-winning screen and stage actor, Mandy Patinkin. Untold stories and firsthand accounts drawn from intimate letters, diaries and interviews found in the Leo Baeck Institute’s vast archive. Each episode, a story of beauty and danger that brings history to life. Because the past is always present. Starting No...