Recipes for remembrance

On 12th July 2021 the UK Met Office reported that “heavy and slow-moving thundery downpours” had brought “significant” flooding to parts of London.

My home was in one of those parts of London.

When I looked outside the window, I could see that the road was flooding but it wasn’t until much later that day that I realised the basement of my flat was flooded.

Most of what was down there was replaceable. What was irreplaceable were historical family documents, including my paternal grandmother’s handwritten notebook in which she recorded over 200 recipes, given to her by other women in the Jewish community in Freiburg.

The first one (left) is a recipe for Mandelhörnchen (Almond Crescents).

Most of the recipes are notated with Rina’s comments. We have sehr fein (particularly good) and sehr gut (very good). Some recipes have been crossed out, and some have no comment. The Mandelhörnchen from Frau Strauss received a “sehr gut”. 

Remembering those who contributed recipes

I wanted to note the names of those who’d shared their recipes with our grandmother and, if possible, find out what had happened to them. I’ve listed those where I was able to find that information in the table below.

There is something so jarring about the contrast between reading recipes which are so heymish (Yiddish for homely) and what happened after November 1938 to the women who wrote them.

The information mostly came from Stolpersteine – stumbling stones that “keep alive the memory of the expulsion of Jews, Sinti and Roma, politically persecuted people, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and euthanasia victims under National Socialism”. The Talmudic saying, “A person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten”, is the Stolperstein project’s motto.

We will remember them.