During The Holocaust, people imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps and ghettos suffered from starvation and malnutrition. Food and recipes were a frequent topic of discussion, and cookbooks of these recipes (sometimes called "fantasy cookbooks"[1][2]) were created and shared among prisoners.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, cookbooks "evoke memories of happier times and bear witness to the will to create under the most dire of circumstances. In some cases, cookbooks were even ways of preserving a past that the Nazis and their collaborators were rapidly destroying".[3] They were written using scraps of paper or stolen office supplies.[1][2]

Examples of such cookbooks are held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum[3] and the Sydney Jewish Museum;[1] there are known to be at least six extant examples of "fantasy cookbooks" from the concentration camps.[1] Publications derived from cookbooks of the Holocaust include In Memory's Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezín[4][5] and Recipes from Auschwitz.[6] In 2015, a French documentary film, Imaginary Feasts, was created that profiled these fantasy cookbooks;[1][7] another film, Mina's Recipe Book, specifically recorded the story of In Memory's Kitchen and its creator, Mina Pächter.[8]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Gina Flaxman; Jaimee Edwards (20 November 2018). "Resilience and recipes in a Jewish cookbook written by concentration camp prisoners". SBS.
  2. 1 2 Victoria Prever (20 April 2020). "Fantasy cookbooks written by concentration camp prisoners". The Jewish Chronicle.
  3. 1 2 "Cookbooks and recipes". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  4. ↑ Cara De Silva, ed. (2006). In memory's kitchen: a legacy from the women of Terezín (First ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7425-4646-2. OCLC 70998659.
  5. ↑ Layla Eplett (8 December 2016). "Remembrance and Resistance Through the Recipes of the Theresienstadt Ghetto". Scientific American.
  6. ↑ Gila Wertheimer (19 October 2020). "Recipes From Auschwitz: The Survival Stories of Two Hungarian Jews". Jewish Book Council.
  7. ↑ "Nazi Prisoners' Imaginary Feasts Explored in Berlin Documentary". NDTV. Agence France-Presse. 13 February 2015.
  8. ↑ Rohini Chaki (5 June 2019). "The Extraordinary 'Cookbooks' Left Behind by Prisoners of War and Concentration Camp Victims". Atlas Obscura.
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