Eva Senta Elisabeth Zimmermann was born in Berlin 1909, daughter of opera-singer Emmy Zimmermann and the Swiss conductor . Franz Beidler. Eva received her first piano lesson when she was 4 and her first violin lesson when she was 7. Dancing lessons began when she was 5. Her first professional engagements were as a singer and actress at Berlin's recently opened Volksbühne, where she met the actor Ernst Busch. They married in 1932. Like her husband she was openly opposed to the Nazi party and was forced to escape to the Netherlands in 1933. In 1942 the Gestapo caught up with her in Paris and transferred to KZ Ravensbrück. In Paris 1946, through a friend, she met the "Paris-Soir" journalist and resistance hero George Sinclair.