This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Ayya Khema was born Ilse Ledermann in Berlin in 1923 to a Jewish family that fled Nazi Germany, a documented refugee childhood distinct from a life that began already inside the Buddhist world she later helped build institutions for. She was later interned by Japanese forces during the Second World War, a documented wartime captivity distinct from a family history that ended with the flight from Germany alone, before eventually settling in the United States.
Travels through Asia with her husband and son between 1960 and 1964 introduced her to meditation practice, a documented route into Buddhism distinct from a calling formed in childhood or through formal religious study. Roughly a decade after those travels she began teaching meditation across Europe, the Americas and Australia, a documented gap of years between first encounter and teaching career distinct from a teacher who began instructing others immediately upon her own introduction to the practice.
That a woman born into a Jewish family that fled Nazi Germany, and later interned by Japanese forces during the Second World War, found her way to Buddhist meditation only in her late thirties, through ordinary family travel rather than any earlier religious formation, marks Ayya Khema's own path to ordination as a documented case where the institution builder later known for founding a nuns' island reached Buddhism by the longest and least likely route among the paths open to her.