The empty supermarket shelves and panic buying of the last few weeks have given us the tiniest glimpse into how life may have felt for our ancestors during wartime.
“Our situation is not even one hundredth of what they were dealing with, but it gives us an opportunity to reflect on what they were going through” says Ilana Epstein.
Epstein, who is Rebbetzen of Cockfosters and North Southgate United Synagogue, and founder of food education charity, Ta’am, recalls a trip at the start of the lockdown when she made a visit to her local Tesco Express for blueberries. “There was nothing on the shelves. Nothing! I’ve never seen empty shelves before in a supermarket. Suddenly the blueberries seemed unimportant.”
She says it has given her some perspective on the women she has taught about for years — the women of the Holocaust who wrote recipes during their time in the Nazi death camps.
“We can’t begin to comprehend what it was like for them. I’ve asked students to imagine what it was like but I’ve never experienced anything like it. We’ve never seen a food panic before. I wanted to cook pasta for my children and there was none in the shops, so I thought I would make some, but there was no flour. I thought I’d use potatoes instead but there were none of those either! In the end I dug around in my freezer and found a potato kugel. Imagine how those mothers felt with literally nothing!”
Epstein explains that the way many of those women found resilience was through sharing. Even though they had little or nothing to eat, what they shared was recipes. “By the time they reached the camps they were generally alone, They formed friendships with other women by talking about food. They would talk about what their mothers had made — what came before.”
Of course they were starving, but, they created an entire culture around these fantasy recipes. “It was an incredible testament to how women found hope and a way of surviving.”
These so-called fantasy cookbooks were written on scraps of paper with whatever writing implement they could steal or swap. Epstein tells me about Valy Kohn, a Czeschoslovakian lady, who was deported to Theresienstadt in 1943 and later transferred to several other camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau. She wrote recipes whilst interned in Lenzing, some on the back of Nazi forms that she found in the street. “A recipe for almond crescents was written on a Nazi propaganda leaflet containing Hitler’s face.”
Another story tells of 16 year old Edith Peer, who had never cooked in her life, but who listened to the women speaking of their recipes. She had a work in the camp office at Ravensbrück and was able to steal paper and pencils so the women could write their recipes down. she wrote them down. She recorded 97 recipes, which included stuffed cabbage, goulash, potato dumplings and many cakes. Her recipes became known as The Ravensbrück cookbook (pictured left).
Five books survived the war. Another, which was the subject of a film, Mina’s Recipe Book, was written by Mina Pachter, who did not survive her time in Theresienstadt. Epstein explains that knowing she was on her death bed, Pachter passed the book to a friend and asked him to take it to her daughter, Anny Stern, who had emigrated to Palestine in 1939. The friend did survive the camp, but the book, which had been sewn together and which had a picture of Pachter and her son (above) on the front, did not make it to Anny for 25 years.
It was taken to Israel, but not until 1960, by which time Stern had left for New York. It eventually reached her, having been passed on by various people in 1969. Stern received a phone call from a stranger who said he had something for her from her mother, who had been dead for more than 20 years. The slim book of 70 recipes was published in the United States as In Memory’s Kitchen — A Legacy from the Women of Terezin.
The published book was less cookery book than historical document, having been translated from its original Czech and German into literal English. Historian Natalie Frank PhD, writes that “when undergoing an experience that is unimaginably horrible, these women fell back on what made up some of their most important memories of normal life and home.”
She goes on to say: “Remembering special meals, planning menus for important get togethers, cooking for synagogue events and religious holidays. Food is one of the things that Jewish women use to create a home for their families and their communities. It is no wonder that when in desperate need of a coping strategy, the women in the Holocaust relied on memories of home and hearth and the creation of meals for those they nurtured to help them remain hopeful.”
Reflecting on these books, Epstein says: “It occurred to me that what I do on a daily basis, researching the provenance of Jewish food sometimes can feel silly. Do people need another recipe? But I guess I am mirroring what these women of the Holocaust were doing — writing recipes in the camps. We show love through food, and when there’s no food, we write down recipes, because one day there will be food.”
