Cookbooks and food in general reflect who we are, preserving recipes from relatives and passing them on to future generations to keep memories alive. Each cookbook or recipe in the Museum’s collection tells a story. They 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. 

Fenyves family cookbook

Steven Fenves (born Fenyves) and his family lived in Subotica, Yugoslavia. His mother, Klári Fenyves created this cookbook with recipes handwritten in Hungarian. 

Family cookbook: Saved and returned

Recipes written down by Ilona Kellner

Ilona Kellner and her family lived in Pelsöc, which became part of Hungary before World War II. In 1944, Ilona was deported to Auschwitz and then to a forced-labor camp. There, Ilona smuggled blank pages out of wastebaskets and wrote down hundreds of recipes dictated by her fellow women prisoners.

Recipes recorded in a forced-labor camp

Eva Oswalt's cookbook

Eva Oswalt was born in Cologne, Germany, to Jewish parents. After Eva and her mother were captured by the SS, she was deported to the Ravensbrück camp in 1943. While imprisoned there, Eva created this cookbook. 

Cookbook created in the Ravensbrück camp