Eve Adams; The Courageous Trailblazer of Lesbian Literature
In the basement of 129 MacDougal Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village there used to be a little tearoom, called Eve’s Hangout. It was frequented by artists, poets, writers, gay men, and lesbian women. The tearoom was owned by a woman who went by the name Eve Adams, and sometimes Eva Kotchever The year was 1925 and Eve was settling into life in New York after leaving Chicago. Before Chicago, Eve spent several years traveling around the United States distributing politically left-wing, sometimes radical, literature. But, to understand Eve’s story, who she was, and her impact, we need to go back to the beginning, before she became Eve.
Eve Adams was originally called Chawa Zloczewer and was born in Russian Polard in 1891. Her father was a grocer and her mother stayed at home to raise the children. Eve was the eldest of seven and was close to her mother, the family often referred to Eve as her mother’s “right hand” as she often helped take care of her younger siblings. Despite a generally happy childhood and closeness with her family, Eve’s life wasn’t perfect. Anti-Jewish sentiment was real in her community and Eve longed to escape the discrimination she saw all around her. She was a brave young woman with an adventurous streak and she wasn’t afraid to take her future into her hands. When Eve was twenty, she traveled alone, by ship to the United States.
The Making of Eve Adams
Poland at the time was full of different groups vying for political power. There were liberals, anarchists, socialists, and nationalists publically campaigning for support so by the time Eve landed in the States, she likely had already been exposed to radical ideas. Eve was well educated, and thoughtful and could already speak seven languages by the time she landed at Ellis Island.
The Greenwich Village tearoom wasn’t Eve’s first foray into hospitality, in fact, she and a former lover, Ruth Norlander had run a similar saloon in Chicago called The Grey Cottage from 1921 to 1923. The Grey Cottage had had a reputation as a refuge for gay people which was exactly what Ruth and Eve had wanted to create: a comfortable place for like-minded people to gather and discuss art, literature, and current events, and maybe flirt with a few cuties.
Radical Circles and Revolutionary Ideas
For years Eve had been involved with more radical, progressive activism, her social circle included novelist Henry Miller, the anarchist, and writer Emma Goldman, and Emma’s lover Ben Reitman, a physician who was also involved in anarchist activism himself and who was, at the time, known by the poorly aged nickname “the hobo doctor”. The nickname was because he focused his care on low-income communities. Notably, he offered abortions before they were legal.
Eve didn’t know it but she had been under surveillance by the United States government since 1919. Under J. Edgar Hoover, a department was formed that would eventually become the F.B.I. At this early stage, its primary focus was gathering information on activists, dissenters, agitators, and union organizers. Eve was considered to be an agitator, after all, she had spent her early years in America distributing anarchist publications, and she was known to socialize with activists, so the government watched her and waited for her to give them a reason to make themselves known.
Lesbian Love: A Groundbreaking Collection of Stories
This brings us back to Eve’s Hangout in 1925. Inspired by the many beautiful, creative, clever, sexy women she had met throughout her travels and at Eve’s Hangout, Eve wrote a book of short vignettes that explored the lives of lesbian women. Eve called her collection of stories “Lesbian Love” and had one hundred and fifty copies printed with a label that said “for private circulation only” and then she distributed them to her friends.
Lesbian Love is an important piece of writing, it is generally acknowledged to be the very first scientific description of women experiencing gender-defying sexual awakenings. It was published under the pseudonym Evelynn Addams. Eve wanted women to be comfortable with the word “lesbian” and use it to mark their identities rather than allow the old stigma associated with same-sex attraction to cloud the word, so she used it in the book’s title.
The first chapter in the book is called “Glimpses” and describes a cozy little tearoom where a handful of women have gathered to speak gently, in soft whispers to one another. Eve writes that the women occasionally break out in laughter as they enjoy one another’s company.
Betrayal and Arrest: The Fall of Eve’s Hangout
So back to the little Greenwich Village tearoom. One evening in June 1926 a woman walks into Eve’s Hangout. She’s wearing a well-cut tweed suit and carrying a briefcase. Eve must have been impressed and probably thought that they might have some commonalities as Eve was also known to prefer masculine fashion choices over the dresses usually worn by women in the 1920s. The woman’s name is Margaret Leonard and she and Eve hit it off right away. The two women made plans to go see a play the next day. They met at Eve’s apartment and took a cab to Times Square. Later, Margaret would say that in the taxi Eve had kissed her “profusely” and slipped a hand up Margaret’s shirt. That night they went dancing and then later, back to Eve’s apartment because Eve wanted to give Margaret a copy of Lesbian Love, the book she had written. I’m sure, after such a successful date, Eve was walking on air the next day.
The next time Eve saw Margaret was a couple of days later when Margaret came back to Eve’s Hangout with several officers in tow. Margaret informed Eve that she was actually an undercover police officer who was there to arrest Eve for “disorderly conduct”, an intentionally vague charge that covered both the kissing in the cab and writing Lesbian Love, which was deemed to be an “obscene” book. Eve was arrested and taken away in handcuffs.
Eve was tried and sentenced to one and a half years in jail, after which the United States government immediately began deportation proceedings. During the deportation hearing Eve explained to the judge that Lesbian Love was intended only for friends and family, it wasn’t meant for wider circulation. She went on to say, under oath: “I never realized that the book was indecent. If I did, I would have never written it. . . . I merely wrote this group of short stories of people I observed in my travels out west and mostly in Greenwich Village. I merely intended to describe these characters with the aim to help them, to show them the truth of their lives.”
Exile and Struggles: Eve’s Life After Deportation
Eve had, years earlier begun the process of becoming an American citizen, but did not complete it, and despite her heartfelt pleas, in 1927 Eve was deported to Poland. Life in her home country was still hard. In a letter to a friend, Eve wrote: “I cannot steal and I am a stranger-Jew here,” she complained about her “everyday worry” being for “a piece of bread”. Eve experienced anti-Semitism and couldn’t get a job that paid her a reasonable, livable wage. She moved around some, from Warsaw to Danzig and then to Zappot, trying to find her way. In 1930 she managed to save enough money to move to Paris where she sold novels to American tourists from a street stand. She wrote and sold a series of prison stories to a magazine called the New Review but the publication folded before they were published.
Back in the States, rumours about Eve were rampant. They said she was the owner of a bookstore cafe called Le Boudoir de l'Amour, they also said she was an active supporter of the Second Spanish Republic. There is no evidence to support either claim.
In 1933 Eve met Hella Olstein Soldner, a Jewish singer who performed under the stage name Nora Waren. The two began a romantic relationship that endured even when Hella got married. The two women planned to move to Palestine where Eve’s brother lived and they were trying to save enough money to do so. In the meantime Eve was still writing to her friends in the United States, she at one point asked her old pal Ben Reitman to help her get a permit to return.
In 1940 Hella and Eve relocated to Southern France and when the Nazis invaded France the two women doubled their efforts to find a way out of the country. They were in Nice in 1943 when the Germans caught up with them. Both women were arrested and held in the Drancy Internment Camp near Paris for a few days before being loaded onto a cattle train headed for Auschwitz.
Eve was passenger number 847 out of 850 on Transport 63 direct to Auschwitz. Neither Eve nor Hella would survive the concentration camp.
Rediscovering Eve: A Family’s Quest for Answers
Eve’s story was very nearly lost to history but when her younger brother Yerachmiel Zahavy lost track of her during the war he began to write letters to the Red Cross asking about her whereabouts. When those letters were returned unanswered he made inquiries in the United States. For years he continued to search for his sister until finally when he lay on his deathbed in 1983, he implored his eighteen-year-old grandson Eran Zahavey to continue the search on his behalf. “You must look for Chawa” the older man begged and Eran promised to do so.
Eran kept his promise and began to write letters that eventually connected him to a woman named Martha Lynn Reis, who had written a thesis on Ben Reitman. Through Martha, Eran learned of Eve’s letters to Ben describing her relationship with Hella. Eran managed to connect with Hella’s family, who shared photographs and letters from Eve and helped her family understand what had become of her.
The world wouldn’t forget Eve. People from all over were working independently to tell her story, but what had become of her writing? Had Lesbian Love been lost to history?
It very nearly was but along came a historian called Jonathan Ned Katz who was working on a biography of Eve’s life. Jonathan Katz had come across a mention of Eve in a review and was intrigued by her use of the word Lesbian. He believed it was the first time the word had been used in American text, and he would know. Jonathan wrote Gay American History and is widely considered to be the leading expert on Gay and Lesbian history. Through a combination of luck, dedication, and whatever it is that makes the right people come together at the right time Jonathan was able to help preserve Lesbian Love.
In 1999, Nina Alvarez, a student in Albany New York had stumbled across what is believed to be the last remaining copy of Lesbian Love. Through a playwright called Barbara Kahn, who had also been a fan of and had written plays about our Eve, Jonathan Katz was able to connect with Nina and see the novel. In 2021 Jonathan finished his biography of Eve titled The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams. He included the original text and illustrations from Lesbian Love thereby saving Eve’s work from disappearing forever.
Today Eve Adams is remembered as a lesbian icon, a fearless storyteller who navigated anti-semitism before and during Nazi rule while exploring the love lives of the women she knew. In Paris, there is both a street and a public school named in her honour. Eve was a woman who was comfortable with herself and her own sexuality, she wore what she wanted, spent time with people she enjoyed, and worked to create a life she loved. That it was taken from her for reasons she could never control is a tragedy and one we must never forget.