Holocaust Survivors' Family Recipes Center Of Event At FL Museum

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The event has been a personal one for Karp, whose Polish grandparents were Holocaust survivors. She worked closely with her grandmother reviewing dishes she grew up eating with her family and reviewing family recipes and records.

“(My grandmother) honestly hasn’t cooked a ton since I was little, but getting to talk to her about this and getting to learn about the dishes that she remembers from her childhood and troubleshooting how the recipes might work together was a really interesting and nice exercise,” the chef said.

It was also a difficult project, as many of the original recipes are written in Polish — a language that Karp grew up hearing from older family members but doesn’t speak or read.

“Looking through books of other family members and their recipes was both extremely challenging and rewarding,” she said. “They’re all handwritten, many in shorthand and mostly in other languages.”

Lipman, based in Maryland and a fifth-generation winemaker and vineyard manager of her family’s Loew Vineyards, has selected wines to pair with each dish created by Karp.

Her grandfather, and founder of Loew, was a Holocaust survivor. He passed away last year at age 96.

Growing up in what was then Lviv, Poland, his family “had a massive empire of honey wineries” there, Lipman told Patch. “He had some really beautiful memories of his family making the honey wine. Our family had one of the longest tenures of making this wine in the world. If he had died (in the Holocaust,) all that would have been erased … Honey wine fermenting in barrels is one of the most beautiful smells in the world and it also haunted him, which is why we got into this business.”

During Saturday’s dinner, she’ll serve Loew Vineyards’ heritage wines, which are tributes to family members, many who didn’t survive World War II.

Klara, a honey wine, honors her great-grandmother and the mother of William Loew, who founded the vineyard. The mead, a blend of local Muscat Canelli, wildflower honey and Vidal Blanc, “reflects Klara’s elegant, caring and refined nature that set high standards in her family and in her life,” the company said.

Melo, a blend of Grüner Veltliner grapes and local wildflower honey, is the nickname of her grandfather’s brother, Elimelech Löw, who the family believes died in the Holocaust.

“He was kind of a suave guy. He was kind of a ladies man, a ‘trombenik’ — a troublemaker — is what we call it in Yiddish,” Lipman said. “So, this wine characterizes him.”

Meanwhile, Malka is a traditional mead, “just honey and water, made in Polish style,” she said, made in honor of Malka Löw, her grandfather’s grandmother.

“(My grandfather’s father had 10 brothers and two sisters and they were all involved in the honey wine business, which was all started by his grandmother, Malka,” Lipman said. “In English, that means ‘queen.’”

Naturally, there’s also a recently released wine in honor of her grandfather, a cabernet sauvignon called Wolf in reference to his birth name, Wolfgang.

“As long as I can remember, people have come up to me and they’d say, ‘Your grandfather made the best cabernet sauvignon that we’ve ever had in Maryland,’” she said. “We’re really proud of this. It’s fantastic.”

Saturday’s event is important, as often the only things Holocaust survivors have to pass down to their families are memories, Lipman said.

“We have no heirlooms. We have no pictures. We only have memory,” she said. “My grandfather started the winery here in Maryland producing honey wine based on an aroma and the memory that he had of his family’s winery. And food and wine go hand in hand, especially in this case. Many of my favorite moments involve my family cooking. My mother’s pierogi and honey wine. So, the memory is really important.”

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