Eva Kotchever

Eva Kotchever (15 June 1891 – 19 December 1943), known also as Eve Adams or Eve Addams in the United States, born as Chawa Złoczower, was a Polish-Jewish émigré librarian and writer, who is the author of Lesbian Love and from 1925 to 1926 ran a popular, openly lesbian literary salon in Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan, called Eve's Hangout. It closed after Eva was convicted and jailed for obscenity and disorderly conduct, which resulted in her deportation to Poland in 1927.

After a new life in Paris, she was later arrested in Nice, France, in 1943, then deported to the French Drancy internment camp and to Auschwitz concentration camp on 17 December, where she was murdered two days later on 19 December. She would later testify that she attended "primary school" in Mława and "graduated in Plotzk". a literary salon that also served as a "refuge for gay people," according to the New York Times. In March 1925, she opened Eve's Hangout, also known as Eve Addams' Tearoom in Greenwich Village. The only source that mentions a famous sign that allegedly read: "Men are admitted, but not welcome" is a 1926 article from Variety, which accused Adams of being financed by "a ring of rich women cultists" and inviting "mannish" women preying on girls. This led to Adams' biographer Jonathan Ned Katz to claim that the sign "probably never existed". Leonard said Kotchever made overt sexual advances to her. After a year in jail, where she met Mae West, she was deported to Poland in December 1927.

Eve lived in Warsaw, Gdańsk, and Sopot, writing to her friends in letters about the low wages and antisemitism in Poland. She regularly corresponded with Ben Reitman, even after her exile to Europe. In 1930 she moved to Paris, where she wrote "a group of prison stories" planned to be published in The New Review (the journal ceased publication before their scheduled date). all regulars of Le Dôme Café, called Dômiers, in the bohemian neighborhood of Montparnasse. Meanwhile, in America exaggerated rumours about Eve Adams circulated,

In 1933, Eve met and began a relationship with Jewish singer Hella Olstein Soldner (who performed under the stage name Nora/Norah Waren), and lived with her even after Hella married. They were deported by cattle car train to Auschwitz in the Convoy 63 on 17 December 1943, with about 850 other Jews, only 31 of whom survived until liberation in 1945, not including Eve or Hella.

Legacy

Playwright Barbara Kahn wrote three plays about Eve Adams, all given full productions at Theater for the New City. "The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams," "Unreachable Eden" and "Island Girls." An excerpt from "Unreachable Eden was presented at the Lower East Side Festival of the Arts. Kahn popularized the life of Eve Adams in the United States.

A street in Paris, rue Eva Kotchever, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris is named after her, as well as a public school.

Kotchever is now considered, especially in Europe, an LGBT icon. The City of New York and the National Park Service tend to keep her memory alive.

In 1999, what is believed to be the only remaining copy of Lesbian Love was found by Nina Alvarez, then a student in Albany, New York.

In 2021, American historian Jonathan Ned Katz published the first biography of Eve, named The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams, featuring the original text and illustrations of rediscovered Lesbian Love.

In 2024, America's Test Kitchen Podcast "Proof" released an episode titled "The (Tea) Room Where It Happened" about Eve and her tearoom "Eve's Hangout," produced by Reporter and Writer Lindsey Polevoy.

On June 17, 2026, tributes marking the centenary of her arrest were organised in New York City. A gathering was held outside the former Eve's Hangout with a performance of actress Lisa Kron followed by a march to Washington Square Park. Manhattan borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal officially requested a posthumous pardon to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, as well to Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a symbolic acknowledgment of the city of New York's responsibility for her persecution.