Exile

• Best of Exile: Before Dr. Ruth

  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 all of this uncertainty - and the sexual awakenings of adolescence - to make it in the world? Dr. Ruth shared her diary for the first time with the Leo Baeck Institute – and with all of you – for this episode of Exile. We are grateful for her generosity with her time and her story – and for the decades of sound advice.  Learn more at www.lbi.org/westheimer. Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, 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. Produced by Brian Rice. 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. Additional sound by Violet Lucca. Theme music by Oliver Wickham. Voice acting by Lucy Hill. Special thanks to Cliff Rubin, Barbara Schmutzler for translating Dr. Ruth’s diaries, Dr. Ruth and Ben Yagoda for All in a Lifetime, and Soundtrack New York.

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• Best of Exile: Love in the Time of Fascism

  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 he know, Helen will save his life…and capture his heart.  The Kurt and Helen Kleinmann Collection in the Leo Baeck Institute Archives includes Helen and Kurt’s entire correspondence - hundreds of letters - from 1938 and 1939, plus telegrams and other material documenting Kurt’s emigration. Learn more at www.lbi.org/kleinmann. Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, 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. Produced by Emily Morantz. Associate Producer is Hailey Choi. 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 Heather Hedley and David Walpole. Special thanks to Len and Joanne Deutchman and the whole Kleinman(n) family, and to Soundtrack New York. 

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• Best of Exile: Summer in Caputh

  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 global fame, but his summer haven can’t keep him safe from the growing Nazi movement bubbling in Germany.  The Albert Einstein Collections in the Archives of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York include hundreds of Einstein’s personal photographs, many from Caputh, as well as the Guestbook from his summer home. After a few pages bearing the signatures of the friends and international luminaries who visited the Einsteins those short summers before 1933, most of the pages remain blank. You can see the Collections at www.lbi.org/caputh.  Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, 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. Produced by Emily Morantz. Associate Producer is Hailey Choi. Research and translation by Isabella Kempf. Sound design and audio mix by Philip Wilson with help from Cameron McIver. Additional sound by Kevin Caners. Theme music by Oliver Wickham. Voice acting by Jillian Rees-Brown.   Thank you to Outloud Audio; Erika Britzke of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam; Michael Grüning’s, “A House for Albert Einstein”; Friedrich Hernick’s “Einstein at Home” translated by Josef Eisinger; The Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; The New York Times; and the Max Planck Society.

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• Best of Exile: Librarian Turned Spy

  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 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 caught? The Florence Mendheim Collection in the Archives of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York contains: her reports and correspondence with the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue and the American Jewish Congress, American pro-Nazi and white supremacist propaganda she collected during her spy work, her personal letters, and some of Florence’s unpublished novels. Go to www.lbi.org/mendheim. Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, 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. Produced by Lisa Gabriele. Associate Producers are Hailey Choi, Jacob Lewis, and Emily Morantz. Research and translation by Isabella Kempf. Sound design and audio mix by Philip Wilson. Theme music by Oliver Wickham. Voice acting by Isabel Kanaan.  Thank you to Outloud Audio, WNYC Archives, the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives at Hebrew Union College, UCLA Film & Television Archive, the New York Times, and eFootage. 

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• Episode 24: Breaking Atoms, Breaking Barriers

  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 known to mankind. Later, when Trude finally makes a name for herself, she does everything in her power to lift up the young women following in her footsteps.  Thanks to a grant from the American Institute of Physics and funds from the German Foreign Office, LBI processed and digitized the approximately 19 linear feet of Trude’s papers, which consist of notes, graphs and diagrams, original data, and correspondence related to her research between 1930 and 2000. Maurice Goldhaber’s papers are awaiting processing. Learn more at lbi.org/goldhaber. Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York and Antica Productions. It’s narrated by Mandy Patinkin. This episode was written by Clem Hitchcock and Rami Tzabar. Our executive producers are Laura Regehr, Rami Tzabar and Stuart Coxe, and Bernie Blum. Our producer is Emily Morantz. Research and translation by Isabella Kempf. Voice acting by Hannah Gelman. Sound design and audio mix by Philip Wilson. Theme music by Oliver Wickham. Special thanks to the Physics World Weekly podcast, and to David Olson from the Oral History Archives at Columbia University. Please consider supporting the work of the Leo Baeck Institute with a tax-deductible contribution by visiting lbi.org/exile2025. This episode of Exile is made possible in part by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future.

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