Ilse Loeb is among the 129 survivors whose recipes and stories are included in The Holocaust Survivor Cookbook.
Photos courtesy Caras & Associates
January 8, 2008
Ilse Loeb of Monroe still can recall the wonderful dishes her mother, murdered in the Holocaust, made during her childhood in Vienna.
“My mother was a great cook,” she added. “She made all kinds of baked goods.”
So when she heard that recipes of Holocaust survivors were being compiled, along with their stories of survival, for a book to benefit an Israeli soup kitchen, she asked to be included.
Loeb’s recipes for noodle pudding and key lime pie are included in The Holocaust Survivor Cookbook, which has already sold out its first printing of 5,000 copies since its publication three months ago.
Profits from the book, which contains 129 stories, photos, and more than 200 recipes from survivors, will benefit Carmei Ha’ir, a Jerusalem soup kitchen, and an international array of Jewish organizations, schools, federations, museums, and synagogues.
Ilse Loeb of Monroe with Michaela Rafetseder, an Austrian student who spent time in the New York area to learn about the Shoa, during a NJ Commission on Holocaust Education Yom Hashoa program in April at Monroe Township High School.
Photo by Debra Rubin
“It has been just unbelievable,” said Joanne Caras, who came up with the idea and put together the book with family support. “It has gone to every continent in the world, and it has touched people,” said Caras in a phone interview from her Florida home (ahead of a planned move to Clarksville, Md).
On Dec. 23, Caras’ daughter, Rachel, and her boyfriend, Dan Loeb, touring Israel on a Birthright Israel trip, presented an $18,000 check to Carmei Ha’ir — a Hebrew acronym for “All who are hungry shall eat” — the first of what Caras believes will be many such donations.The book has also raised $40,000 to date for Jewish organizations that have sold it as a fund-raiser. The book is available only through organizations or Caras’ Web site.
“I will not make it available to the major booksellers,” said Caras. “That would cut into money for Jewish education and causes. Every penny will go to Jewish causes and the soup kitchen. This is the only way to honor the survivors.”
Loeb said the recipes invoke unique memories from before and during the Holocaust.
“What is so unusual about this book is that all these people who went through the Holocaust had hardly any food to eat during the war, yet they remembered their recipes,” said Loeb.
Loeb was sent by her parents at age 13 to Holland, where they hoped she would find safe haven after the Nazis annexed Austria. She never saw them again.
After the Germans invaded Holland in 1940, Loeb was forced into hiding and was given refuge by non-Jews, particularly Johtje and Aart Vos, who sheltered 32 Jews and four dissidents in their home during World War II. Johtje Vos died at age 97 on Oct. 10 in upstate New York, where she was eulogized by Loeb.
Ilse Loeb at 13 with her parents and brother three days before she was sent from Vienna after the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938 to what they believed was a safe haven in Holland. She never saw her parents again.
Loeb lectures extensively in schools about her wartime experience. She cofounded Hidden Children, whose members were sheltered in German-occupied European counties during the war.
She came to the United States in 1947. She and her husband, Walter, have four children and seven grandchildren.
Loeb decided not to use any of her mother’s recipes in the book.
“I decided to use a noodle pudding and key lime pie because I thought this was something everybody would like and make,” she explained. “My daughter even asked me why I didn’t put in a Viennese recipe.”
Caras got the idea for the book in 2005 while visiting her son, Jonathan, and his wife, Sarah, students who had made aliya and were volunteering at Carmei Ha’ir, which serves more than 500 meals daily to hungry Israelis. With her was Sarah’s mother, Gisela Zerykier of Teaneck.
They wanted to help financially, but the idea for the cookbook didn’t gel until the death of Zerykier’s mother, a Holocaust survivor living in Belgium.
“She was a Holocaust survivor saved by nuns in a convent and a wonderful cook,” said Caras. “I thought the idea of sharing and preserving those stories would be a beautiful way to pay tribute and connect her story.”
The first check — in the amount of $18,000 — from sales of The Holocaust Survivor Cookbook was presented in Jerusalem on Dec. 23 to Yehuda Azrad, far right, of Carmei Ha’ir soup kitchen in Jerusalem by, from left, Dan Loeb and Mickey, Rachel, Sarah, and Jonathan Caras.
Caras took on the project, which she calls “a book of 129 miracles” with the help of her husband, Harvey, daughter, and son, Mickey, sending inquiries to newspapers and publications around the world. They got responses from every continent except Antarctica and South America.
Perhaps the most surprising response was one she received just days before from Laura Bush’s secretary. It seems when Hillel Baron, a Columbia, Md., rabbi, came to the White House to kasher its kitchen to prepare food for its Hanukka celebration, he brought along a copy of the book because the story and recipes of his mother, Arlette, were in it.
“She called to say how much Laura Bush liked the book,” said Caras. “She wanted my address because Mrs. Bush wanted to send me a letter.”