THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Eva Kollisch
August 17, 1925 – October 10, 2023
“When I thought about the roles that most women played, as housewives and mothers and so dependent on men – I just said, boy, I’m not gonna be like that.”
Writer, feminist, anti-war activist, lesbian rights activist. Co-founded the pioneering Women’s Studies department at Sarah Lawrence College. Along with wife Naomi Replansky, founded The Older Women’s Network, a support group for gay and straight women over 60 that met monthly in the West Village for over 20 years.


Photo 1. Faculty Emerita Eva Kollisch taught Comparative Literature, German and Women’s Studies at Sarah Lawrence from 1963-1993. Photo 2. Naomi Replansky and Eva Kollisch, 1990s.

Eva Kollisch, 2013 (photo by Saskia Scheffer)
More About Eva:
- Obituary, The New York Times
- Faculty Emerita Eva Kollisch Profiled in “Exile” Podcast, narrated by Mandy Patinkin, April 2023
- They Survived the Spanish Flu, the Depression and the Holocaust. Two extraordinary women — one 101, the other 95 — lived through the worst of the 20th century. They have some advice for you. By Ginia Bellafante, March 2020
- Stories Survive: Eva Kollisch, Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, December 22, 2020
- Naomi Replansky and Eva Kollisch Interview, by Esther Cohen and Rachel Bernstein, camera and edit by Ruth Sergel, 2016