The potato circles are a party treat with a fluffy texture, filled with beef, paprika, garlic and sour cream, and when Steven Fenves was a boy, they were off-limits, reserved for the guests at his parents’ home.
That was back in the former Yugoslavia, before World War II, before his family was swept into the maw of the Holocaust.
Now 91, he can taste them again, and others can share in his story and experience, because of his collaboration with New Orleans chef Alon Shaya.
The potato circles are part of a trove of recipes Shaya has revived from a recipe book that Fenves’ mother kept before the war. Now they’re part of program from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum expanding across the country.
A selection of these recipes were served recently at a New Orleans fundraising event, dishes like roasted veal loin with paprikash, duck liver pate on rye crackers and crisp-shelled apple tarts, a reflection of an ordinary family’s life before everything changed.
Fenves was 13 in 1944 when the Nazis forced his family from their home and sent them to a concentration camp. He and his sister survived, their parents did not, and they children made it to America to start a new life.
Eventually, they received a package of family belongings rescued by their former cook, and that included a recipe book. It became part of the Holocaust Museum’s collection. Shaya discovered it in museum storage. He learned that Fenves lives nearby and volunteers at the museum. The pieces started coming together.
The two worked together at a distance during COVID to decipher the old recipes, hand-written in a mother’s close Hungarian script. They assessed and adjusted until they hit the way the old man remembered from his youth.
They realized they had a potent way to communicate the story of the Holocaust and the humanity persevering through it.
The museum has turned their work into a series of events, continuing across the country, to fund further archival and educational work. And it all started with a mother’s cooking.
