A Recipe for Remembrance

Dining on a meal of roast turkey, potato circles, semolina sticks and walnut cream cake, Steven Fenves marveled at the spread before him. “What I tasted was really terrific,” said the 93-year-old Auschwitz survivor, musing over the redolent flavors. “The semolina sticks were all very authentic.”

Fenves had stepped back in time, savoring the taste of his mother’s recipes for the first time in 80 years. The experience reconnected him to his childhood in Yugoslavia and awakened memories of a happy life before it was torn apart by World War II.

Collected in a tattered, cloth-bound ledger book, the recipes were almost lost forever. Rescued by the family’s cook in May 1944 as Fenves, his sister and their parents were deported to concentration camps, the recipe book likely would have remained a dusty artifact in the collection of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum if not for the work of Emily Shaya (B ’06, B ’13), her husband, chef Alon Shaya, and their friend Mara Baumgarten Force, professor of practice at the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University.

Their discovery of the recipe book in 2019 set in motion an inspirational journey that has reenergized Fenves and put his family’s long-lost recipes back on dinner tables. The Shayas and Force dubbed their effort Rescued Recipes.

“Generations of family histories and family traditions were obliterated during the Holocaust,” says Force, whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors. “This project reanimates and gives life to that past.”

As Director of New Projects at Pomegranate Hospitality, the restaurant group she owns with Alon, Emily Shaya sits at the helm of an organization that has garnered local and national accolades. In 2015, Alon won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the South, and in 2016, he won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in America.

Beyond their culinary success, the Shayas are also involved in a host of public service activities, including partnering with local nonprofits to educate young culinary workers and donating thousands of dollars to local charities.

“We can’t just be off by ourselves,” Emily says of their service activities. “It’s really important for us to have a relationship with the New Orleans community.”

Emily’s relationship with New Orleans began in 2002 when she arrived from Calhoun, Georgia, as a first-year student at Tulane University. After graduating in 2006 with a Bachelor of Science in Management, she landed a job with Woodward Interests, a New Orleans-based development company.

Overseeing real estate projects may seem a far cry from managing restaurants, but Emily drew on that experience when she entered the hospitality industry. In 2017, she and Alon, whom she married in 2012, founded Pomegranate Hospitality. A year later they opened two modern Israeli restaurants: Saba in uptown New Orleans and Safta in Denver. “Really, those restaurants were real estate development projects,” Emily says. “I took that real estate expertise and applied it to the first two restaurants we opened.”

Following the success of Saba and Safta, the Shayas partnered with the Four Seasons Hotel in New Orleans to open Miss River and the Chandelier Bar. In 2023, they introduced another restaurant, Silan, at the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort in the Bahamas, and in 2024 they launched Safta 1964, a limited-run celebrity-chef residency at The Wynn Las Vegas. They plan to open Safta’s Table soon in New Orleans’ Lakeview neighborhood.

In running Pomegranate Hospitality, Emily’s business mindset complements Alon’s culinary focus. While Alon oversees menus and food production, Emily makes hiring decisions, supports staff and develops partnerships to advance the company’s philanthropic goals.

Each year, the Shayas host a fundraiser to benefit the New Orleans Career Center, whose culinary program provides career training for students entering the hospitality sector. Emily and Alon also support up-and-coming restaurateurs through the Shaya Barnett Foundation, created with Alon’s mentor Donna Barnett, which offers educational opportunities for students looking to work in the food and beverage industry.

“What Emily is doing in her businesses is an extension of the service-learning we teach here at Tulane,” says Force, “and it’s fantastic to see.”

When she’s not laying the groundwork for future Pomegranate Hospitality ventures, Emily oversees the minutiae that make for a memorable dining experience. “The way people feel when they’re in the restaurants is really important to us,” she explains. “And it all boils down to the finishing touches.”

“With everything we do,” adds Alon, “there’s meaning and a story behind it.”

Stories are served in abundance at their restaurants. Saba’s name, Hebrew for grandfather, calls to mind paternal stories passed down between generations. Dishes like matzo ball soup, lamb kofta and tahini hummus evoke Alon’s youth in Israel, where he lived until he was four years old. Miss River tells a different story, one that begins much closer to the couple’s present-day home. The restaurant draws inspiration from Southern culinary traditions and Emily’s Georgia upbringing, with a menu boasting everything from Emily’s red beans and rice to butter-fried beignets.

Roots of recollection

Perhaps the most important story the Shayas have helped to tell is that of Steven Fenves.

Born into a wealthy family in Subotica, Yugoslavia, in 1931, Fenves enjoyed a happy childhood until he was 10 years old. Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia, and Subotica was annexed by Hungary. In March 1944, German troops occupied Subotica, and the Fenves family were sent to concentration camps. As neighbors looted their home, the family’s cook Maris sneaked in.

“She was a hero,” Alon says. “She went into the Fenves family apartment when they were being taken out and sent to Auschwitz. She went in and saved the family cookbook.”

At Auschwitz, Fenves worked as an interpreter for the German Kapo, later being forced into slave labor at an aircraft factory. As it became clear that Germany would lose the war, Fenves and his fellow inmates were sent on a death march to Buchenwald. The morning after his arrival — April 11, 1945 — American troops liberated the camp.

Fenves and his sister Estera survived, but they later learned that their mother and grandmother had died. Their father died a few months later.

Years later, after Fenves immigrated to the United States, Maris found him and returned the cookbook. Instead of keeping it, he donated it to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Meaning through memory

In fall 2019, Mara Force was speaking at a Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans event when she shared the story of her grandfather, Misha Meilup, a Lithuanian Holocaust survivor. One of the few possessions he brought with him to America after the war, she said, was the spoon he had used to eat with while imprisoned at Dachau. On Jewish holidays, Force’s family uses it as a serving spoon to remember their shared history and celebrate the life they now enjoy.

Alon Shaya also attended the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans event, and he immediately approached Force to tell her a story of his own. He had recently visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust museum, where he’d viewed one of its best-known artifacts, a flag from a concentration camp bearing the hand-written recipes of inmates. Alon was struck with inspiration: What if he were to cook those long-lost recipes to celebrate the life and spirit of those brave prisoners?

He reached out to Yad Vashem, but the museum said it wouldn’t be possible.

“I told him it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard,” Force recalls. “I told him I have a relationship with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., and I’m sure they won’t shoot you down.”

Force reached out to the museum’s Jed Silberg. A few months later, the four of them — Force, Silberg, Emily and Alon — were at the museum sifting through artifacts when a tattered book caught Alon’s attention.

“We came across this cookbook called ‘The Fenves Family Cookbook,’” Alon recalls. “The staff at the museum told us Steven was still alive, so we reached out.”

Fenves quickly became friends with the Shayas and agreed to translate the Hungarian recipes. Over Zoom and Facebook, Alon and Fenves explored the recipes, discussing their flavors, textures and appearances as Alon adapted methods according to Fenves’ recollections. Finally, he was ready to put his work to the test.

“We wanted him to taste his mother’s cooking,” Alon says. “So we began sending dishes to him packed in dry ice.”

Almost immediately, Emily noticed a change in Fenves’ demeanor, as if the flavors had unlocked something. He regaled them with stories of going to the market in Subotica with his mother, pickling vegetables and watching Maris prepare family meals in their kitchen.

“He lit up,” she recalls. “He started telling us his childhood memories.”

In fall 2020, the Shayas partnered with Force and the Holocaust Memorial Museum to host a fundraiser on Zoom highlighting their effort to preserve the Fenves family’s recipes. The event ended up raising $50,000.

From that first meal, Rescued Recipes grew into a series of fundraiser dinners across the country. Proceeds from the events go directly to the museum’s preservation efforts, helping to digitize archival materials — like the Fenves family recipe book — and make them accessible to the public.

“Rescued Recipes has helped the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum raise over $800,000 in the past three years to support the collection and conservation work that we do,” says Silberg. “That impact is a direct result of the vision and dedication of Emily, Alon and Mara Force.”

Rescued Recipes has changed countless lives, including Fenves’ own.

Fenves was considering stepping away from his duties at the museum, but meeting the Shayas changed his outlook. “When we discovered his story and started talking to him about it, it gave him a renewed passion for sharing his experience,” Emily says. “It was an opportunity to tell his story from a more positive angle.”

“The Holocaust looms so large,” says Force. “It’s so nice to be able to think about the joy of the before-times. Ultimately, it’s a celebration of life.

“Food can nourish not just your body but also your soul,” she adds. “How can you not have empathy for somebody whose food you’ve tasted?”

And for the Shayas, food is a common language that people of all backgrounds can understand.

“Food spans generations and demographics,” Alon says. “It connects people. Rich or poor, white or Black, Jewish or non-Jewish, and everything in between.”

Rescued Recipes dinners take place throughout the United States. For more information, visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website.