Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal urges State, City formally recognize unjust conviction of Polish-Jewish Lesbian Holocaust victim

NEW YORK, NY – Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal wrote to Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani to urge the State of New York issue a posthumous pardon, and the City of New York formally recognize the unjust conviction of Eve Adams, a Polish-Jewish immigrant arrested in 1926 and convicted for the crime of being a lesbian, deported, and later murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  

Eve Adams immigrated to New York City in 1912 and became a figurehead of Greenwich Village’s bohemian community. She operated Eve’s hangout, one of the earliest known explicitly queer spaces in the city, and published Lesbian Love, a collection of short stories of queer intimacy. On June 17, 1926, Adams was arrested in her tearoom in a police entrapment operation, convicted of obscenity and disorderly conduct, imprisoned, and deported. In 1943, she was arrested by the Nazis in occupied France and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was murdered. 

Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said: “Eve Adams’ conviction and deportation is among the most unjust in our city’s history. One hundred years after her arrest and subsequent murder by the Nazis at Auschwitz, we have the obligation and the opportunity to say plainly that she deserved better. I respectfully request Governor Hochul issue a posthumous pardon, and ask the City to acknowledge Eve Adams’s 1926 conviction was unjust and rooted in discriminatory law enforcement. This Pride Month, we should affirm New York City failed her as a pioneer of LGBTQ+ life, as an immigrant, and as a Jewish woman who was ultimately deported to her death.”  

Read BP Hoylman-Sigal’s letters to Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani below.  

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