I thought I would never go to Eastern Europe, but, by the end of this journey, I found unexpected resolution. To my husband’s dismay, I referred to this “vacation” as the Concentration Trip Tour. Harry reminded me that we would be spending only two of our eighteen days visiting concentration camps. To prepare, I immersed myself in Holocaust nonfiction and reached a moderate level of self-traumatization before setting foot on the plane. At the last minute I reached in my jewelry box to find an amulet for this journey. Since my Magen David and mezuzah had been given to Vera long ago, I was left with a golden hamsa (the hand against the evil eye), a gift brought to me from Israel by my friend, Janet, who had already made the trip to Poland.
Last week my blog was about Berlin. Today, I write about Poland. I thank Dana Yugend-Pepper and...
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing by Anya Von Bremzen. Crown Publishers: NY 2013.
Let’s begin with a few basic facts.
1. While we have grocery stores in the US, citizens in the Former Soviet Union have for decades waited in endless lines trying to “procure” food.
2. As Anya Von Bremzen states, “Inevitably, a story about Soviet food is a chronicle of longing, of unrequited desire.” (p.2)
Since we just completed two Passover seders, I must pose the question -- why is Anya Von Bremzen’s memoir different than all previous memoirs?
Other writers may be eloquent or witty, but this author is both. I love the comparison of her Mom’s dream life to black and white movies from Stalinist times “sleek cold war thrillers laced with KGB spooks; melodramas starring duty-crushed lovers.”
Second, because this is a shared memoir of Anya and her 79... 
