In Memory's Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezin [Paperback]

Michael Berenbaum (Author), De Cara Silva (Editor), Bianca Steiner Brown (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2006

The sheets of paper are as brittle as fallen leaves; the faltering handwriting changes from page to page; the words, a faded brown, are almost indecipherable. The pages are filled with recipes. Each is a memory, a fantasy, a hope for the future. Written by undernourished and starving women in the Czechoslovakian ghetto/concentration camp of Terezín (also known as Theresienstadt), the recipes give instructions for making beloved dishes in the rich, robust Czech tradition. Sometimes steps or ingredients are missing, the gaps a painful illustration of the condition and situation in which the authors lived. Reprinting the contents of the original hand-sewn copybook, In Memory's Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezín is a beautiful memorial to the brave women who defied Hitler by preserving a part of their heritage and a part of themselves. Despite the harsh conditions in the Nazis' "model" ghetto - which in reality was a way station to Auschwitz and other death camps - cultural, intellectual, and artistic life did exist within the walls of the ghetto. Like the heart-breaking book I Never Saw Another Butterfly, which contains the poetry and drawings of the children of Terezín, the handwritten cookbook is proof that the Nazis could not break the spirit of the Jewish people.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Of all the documents of the Holocaust, this cookbook compiled from memory by the female prisoners at Terezin, a way station to Auschwitz, may be the most remarkable. The Terezin prisoners recalled and wrote down their recipes for chocolate torte, breast of goose, plum strudel, and other traditional dishes not because they thought they might ever need them--they were surviving on scraps and potato peels at the time--but as a testament to the future, so that their grandchildren might receive a fragment of their inheritance. The manuscript found its way in 1969 to Anny Stern, the daughter of Mina Pachter, whose poems on barracks life are also included. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Full of bilingual recipes translated from broken German into English, the manuscript of this book traveled from the Terezin concentration camp, which served as a way station to Auschwitz, to one of the writers' daughters in Manhattan. Cooking is this book's subject matter, but survival is its theme; it is both moving and paradoxical that this material was collected by starving internees. Those interested strictly in a cookbook may be frustrated by the European measurements ("Practical Notes" provide conversion guidelines), but for readers concerned with Holocaust history, this is an important document. Its dishes might be used daily or at special religious celebrations, but as noted in the foreword, "[this work] is not to be savored for its culinary offerings but for the insight it gives us in understanding the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to transcend its surroundings, to defy dehumanization, and to dream of the past and of the future." For Judaica and Holocaust studies collections.?Wendy Miller, Lexington, P.L., Ky.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc. (March 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742546462
• ISBN-13: 978-0742546462
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 0.4 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #697,801 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > History > Europe > Czech Republic

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 62 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars from Terezin concentration camp June 29, 2002

By Karen Sampson Hudson

Format:Hardcover

This book is a testimony to the towering reaches of the human spirit. In the midst of the horrors of Terezin, surrounded by suffering, deprivation, and death, hungry women recorded recipes of warmth, comfort, and abundance. They remembered cooking delicious meals, serving delicacies and caviar, making aspic, cooking many varieties of dumplings. The hand-written cookbook they put together demonstrates that although the Nazis held their bodies captive, their spirits remained free, drawing strength and nourishment from their memories of happy days and fully-laden tables. Despite the wretched conditions of the camp, these women dared to hope for a time when they could return to their kitchens and once again rejoice in feeding their families.

This haunting book will bless your life.

50 of 51 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Some people don't get it, do they? March 8, 2005

By E. H. Garlish

Format:Hardcover

To the reviewer who thinks this book is worthless as a historical document and a lousy cookbook: you're missing the point completely. This book moved me to tears-- in my family recipes passed down from mother to daughter are our memory and our inheritance. The women who dictated these recipes probably didn't get that chance, and that this book survived is amazing.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another insight September 1, 2006

By Camille Marchetta

Format:Hardcover

This deeply moving book doesn't pretend to be either a history, or a cookbook. A previously unknown kind of Holocaust literature, it presents itself, as its title implies, as a form of memoir, with all the flaws (inaccuracy being chief among them) and virtues (a vivid evocation of states of mind) of the genre. And there isn't a more telling example of the ravages of the Nazi death camps than the fact that these hungry, terrorized women of Terezin could not remember accurately recipes they had prepared countless times in their lives. Nor is there a more poignant witness to the indomitability of the human spirit than the determination of these women, as they confronted annihilation, to preserve some part of their culture, their memories of the past, their dreams of the future, by writing these recipes down. What a testimony that was to the power of food to nourish the soul as well as the body, and to the force of hope, for defying logic and experience they believed this "cookbook" might survive. That it did is a gift to us all.