In Memory's Kitchen : A Legacy from the Women of Terezin 
asked by casurf on November 27, 2006 2:40 PM
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.
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This book is an amazing document and is a important part of holacaust literature. Furthemore it is most moving and keeps us connected to the past.
reviewed by webin on November 28, 2006 4:37 AM
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This book is a unique combination of scholarship, history, and memory. Although it contains recipes, this is not in any traditional way a cookbook. In Memory's Kitchen is the moving story of how during World War II the women of the Terezin concentration camp spent evenings writing down recipes that reminded them of their previous 'real' lives: when they lived with and cooked for families and friends. They substituted memory for food and in doing so kept their humanity alive. The 'recipes' were smuggled out of the camp and years later found their way to the surviving daughter of one of the 'cooks.' Definitely worth reading.
reviewed by literary on November 29, 2006 6:43 PM