Dear Reader,
People always ask me, when they find out I interviewed Holocaust survivors for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation, which survivors’ stories I used in my novels. My answer, “None—they don’t belong to me. They’re hallowed ground.” Which is true. But Peter Rashkin’s story in
The Lost Family
was loosely inspired by one gentleman I interviewed. Like Peter, the survivor was a chef in his native country. Like Peter, he survived concentration camps: Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Like Peter, he emigrated to the States after liberation—and like Peter, the only job he could get was as a busboy, from which he was then fired because the camp tattoo on his arm upset the American diners.
This gentleman started me thinking about the refugee chapter of the survivor’s life: what it would be like to come to a new land, having lost everything and everybody you loved, and starting over in a country that had never been occupied. And how, for such a man, food and cooking would be his universal language, a kitchen, his haven in a world where there really wasn’t safety anymore. As stated in the novel, “A rutabaga was a rutabaga. Vegetables, meat and technique had no language. A kitchen, any kitchen, was Peter’s home.”
For so many of us, food means comfort, tradition, ritual, family. Home. I hope
The Lost Family
is a feast of delights for you, a reading experience that transports you to another world while reminding you of the things we all share every day.
Bon appétit!
Jenna Blum
