Honoring Holocaust Memory Through Rescued Recipes with Chef Alon Shaya

Join James Beard Award-winning Chef Alon Shaya for a powerful evening exploring the intersection of food, memory, and history. Shaya will share his experience collaborating with Holocaust survivors to recreate family recipes saved during one of the darkest chapters in human history.

While researching in the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Shaya discovered recipes scribbled on scraps of paper. These fragments of culinary tradition were preserved from Jewish ghettos and concentration camps. Among these was a Hungarian family cookbook that once belonged to Holocaust survivor Steven Fenves, who survived Auschwitz after being forced from his home in Subotica, Yugoslavia, in 1944. The cookbook was rescued by the family’s former cook, who safeguarded it from looters and later returned it to Fenves.

Shaya’s work brings these recipes and the lives they represent back to the table. His project not only honors the resilience of Jewish families before and during the Holocaust but also supports ongoing efforts to conserve and share the Museum’s archives for future generations.