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A Book of Recipes and Testimony From Auschwitz-Birkenau Survivors

This affecting new cookbook includes mostly Eastern European dishes as well as first-person accounts of suffering and survival.

Credit...Ellen Silverman for Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation

Preparing the dishes in this substantial new cookbook feels like paying homage to resilient survivors. The elegance of this new volume, “Honey Cake & Latkes: Recipes from the Old World by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Survivors,” assembled and copublished by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation led by Ronald S. Lauder, almost camouflages the horrors until you read the first-person accounts. That starving people think about food and summon rich memories is not surprising, as the book, not the first to cover this topic, explains. The mostly Eastern European recipes, like a simple butter cake, a plum torte, green beans in dill sauce, chicken paprikash and Elie Wiesel’s latkes, are often excellently rendered. Some give copious quantities to serve what were once large, extended families, and might require adjustment. Proceeds from the sales of the book will benefit the Foundation.

“Honey Cake & Latkes: Recipes from the Old World by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Survivors” (Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, Melcher Media, $45).

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Florence Fabricant is a food and wine writer. She writes the weekly Front Burner and Off the Menu columns, as well as the Pairings column, which appears alongside the monthly wine reviews. She has also written 12 cookbooks. More about Florence Fabricant

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section D, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: To Appreciate: Recipes From Survivors Of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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