Alon Shaya, a James Beard award-winning Israeli-American chef and owner of five restaurants, described to Fox News Digital how a beautifully bound and aged leather cookbook caught his eye — and how his life took a remarkable turn as a result.
The chef, based in the U.S., spotted the cookbook when he was looking at culinary artifacts at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C.
The cookbook survived the Holocaust.
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It had belonged to Steven Fenves (Fenyves), 93, an Auschwitz survivor and speaker, Shaya learned. He also volunteers at the museum.
Fenves spent his imprisonment in three different concentration camps.
Chef Alon Shaya, left, and Steven Fenves, second from left, speak with guests at a Rescued Recipes event in Washington, D.C. (Leigh Vogel for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Afterward, he served in the U.S. Army, got married, had four children and became a civil engineer who made pioneering contributions to the field, according to the National Academy of Engineering.
“I immediately knew that I wanted to cook for Steven from the book,” Shaya said. “My chef instincts kicked in.”
Deported to Auschwitz
Fenves was born in Subotica, Yugoslavia, in 1931, according to USHMM. He grew up in a “happy, upper-middle-class life,” he told the museum, with family servants, including a cook, a tutor and a chauffeur.
“We had a very rich life, lots of parties, lots of places of entertainment,” he also said.
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But everything changed for them in 1941, when his father, Lajos, who managed a publishing house, was forced from his office at gunpoint.
His business was given to someone who wasn’t Jewish as part of a process called “Aryanization.”
The gates of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland, circa 1965. The sign above says “Arbeit Macht Frei” – “Work Makes You Free.” (Keystone/GettyImages)
Hungarian officers took over most of their home — and the Fenves family had to sell their possessions to survive, according to USHMM.
In April 1944, Fenves’ father was arrested and deported to Auschwitz.
After the family was taken away, the cook entered the home and saved the family cookbook, which was filled with about 150 recipes.
Three months later, when Fenves was 13, he was also sent to the concentration camp, along with his sister, mother and maternal grandmother, according to USHMM.
Chef Shaya revealed how Maris the cook entered the Fenves’ house with looters after the family was taken away.
She saved the family cookbook, which was filled with about 150 recipes that Fenves’ mother, Klara, meticulously wrote out by hand in Hungarian.
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Shaya described Maris as heroic for doing a “huge mitzvah [good deed] for a Jewish family.” He added, “Helping a Jew at that time could cost you your life.”
A graphic artist who also knitted shawls, Klara died a few weeks after her own mother was killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, according to USHMM. Shaya said that Maris also saved several pieces of Klara’s hand-drawn artwork.
In April 1945, Fenves was liberated by American soldiers from the Buchenwald concentration camp after a death march, according to the museum. Fenves returned home to Yugoslavia, where he was reunited with his father and sister, Estera, shortly before his father passed away, USHMM said.
Chef Shaya, at left, is photographed with Joan Nathan and Steven Fenves at a Rescued Recipes event in Washington, D.C. (Leigh Vogel for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
The Fenves family cook, Maris, met them in their hometown to give them back their family’s cookbook.
“It was the only thing they had left,” Shaya said.
‘Sense of loyalty’
Fenves and his sister were still experiencing antisemitism when they came back to Yugoslavia; they decided to move to Paris before ultimately settling in Chicago.
Because Yugoslavia was a communist country, they couldn’t take anything with them when they left — so they gave the cookbook back to Maris, Shaya said.
A few years later, “a big package arrived, and it was from Maris,” said Shaya.
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Fenves described how Maris, who was not Jewish, saved his family’s recipe book because of her “sense of loyalty.” It was clear her bravery was extraordinary.
“He picked out the recipes from the book that he really … had a connection to from when he was 13 years old.”
Fenves chose to donate the book of recipes to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2010, according to multiple sources.
Shaya said that in 2019, the museum put him in touch with Fenves — and Fenves translated the recipes into English for him.
“He’s the one who picked out the recipes from the book that he really remembered and had a connection to from when he was 13 years old,” Shaya said.
Shaya shipped the dishes he made to Fenves’ home. “It was an opportunity to give Steven a taste of his mother’s cooking for the first time in 80 years,” he told Fox News Digital. (Leigh Vogel for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
The chef said that he couldn’t fly to meet Fenves due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
So he prepared his childhood recipes for him from afar, such as Fenves’ favorite semolina sticks — which he said was cooked like pasta and then chilled, cut, breaded and fried.
Shaya also recreated Fenves’ mother’s unique meatloaf, shaped like a turkey. He fondly recalled Fenves saying he used to fight over with his sister.
Shaya shipped the dishes to Fenves’ home. “It was an opportunity to give Steven a taste of his mother’s cooking for the first time in 80 years,” he said.
‘Connection to life’
The two bonded over food — and Shaya said they “formed this beautiful, beautiful friendship.“
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Prior to meeting Shaya, Fenves said he was in a slump. He said that he no longer broke into tears while telling his story because “it just became so routine, so cold” — until Shaya inspired him by making things new again.
In 2022, Fenves and Shaya started hosting donor dinners at private homes, called Rescued Recipes.
At the Rescued Recipes events, Fenves shares his story and Shaya prepares dishes that evoke childhood memories from before the war.
At these events, Fenves shares his story and Shaya prepares homemade dishes that evoke precious and innocent childhood memories from before the war.
Even during the darkest of times in Auschwitz, food was an inspiration, Fenves told Southern Jewish Life magazine. He said the prisoners would talk about the foods they remembered and tell stories about the meals they imagined ordering after they were freed.
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Shaya described the Fenves family recipes as “a connection to life” — and said the goal of Rescued Recipes is to inspire and educate people.
The chef told Fox News Digital that Fenves never got to try the potato circles topped with ground lamb, paprika, onions and garlic, which chef Maris used to leave on the kitchen counter.
These potato circles were prepared at a recent Rescued Recipes event. (Andrew Thomas Lee for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
She would shoo him away — telling him they were for the adults.
So at the first Rescued Recipes event in Washington, D.C., hosted by cookbook author Joan Nathan, Shaya said he greeted Fenves “at the door with a big tray of potato circles.”
He said that he made them with mushrooms instead of lamb because Fenves wanted a vegetarian option.
The chef said he hopes these dinners are enlightening for young people so that they can “understand how not to hate.”
So far, the Rescued Recipes project has raised over $750,000, Shaya said, which goes toward digitizing artifacts, such as the Fenves family cookbook, that are in the museum archives.
“It’s documentation that serves as a reminder to some people that the Holocaust actually did happen,” said the chef.
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“It serves as proof and it serves as a way to learn more and teach your children.”
Shaya said he speaks at schools.
He recently taught seventh graders about the Holocaust at his flagship restaurant, Saba, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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The chef said that he hopes these dinners are enlightening for young people so that they can “understand how not to hate, and what to look out for, whether it’s propaganda or people that are sowing the seeds of racism or bigotry in any way.”
The next Rescued Recipes dinner is taking place at a private home in Las Vegas this week. Looking ahead to 2025, another dinner is already scheduled for February in Denver.
Eve Glover is a contributing writer for Fox News Digital.
