Suitcase Full of Cookies

By Carolyn DuClos

“By the age of fourteen, Hannelore had lost her home and her citizenship, when the Nazis and their collaborators worked to erase every trace of Jewish life in Germany. From 1941 to 1945 she was a captive, moved around through five concentration camps and prisoner ghettos, until she was finally liberated by an American soldier. Her entire family had been murdered and she was the only one to survive the Holocaust.

As told through the lens of her first daughter Carolyn, this is the American immigrant story of resilience, hope, and cookies. A young woman who has lost everything is embraced by her adopted country, and through ingenuity, patience, and perseverance, discovers joyful ways to preserve her heritage and culture through baking.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369404959

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Copyright © 2023 by Carolyn DuClos. 854325

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic

or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by

any information storage and retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

Library of Congress Control Number:         2023914906

Rev. date: 08/21/2023

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

PART I

Chapter 1     My Childhood in Germany

Chapter 2     The Nazis Increase their Influence and World War II Begins; Our Family is Separated

Chapter 3     The Final Solution: Deportation and Murder

Chapter 4     Nazis Destroy Evidence of Their Crimes Summer 1943

Chapter 5     My Life in the Camps

Chapter 6     Liberation

Chapter 7     Life in a Displaced Persons’ Camp – Sweden

Chapter 8     Photographs

Chapter 9     Rebirth: From Sweden to America

PART II

Chapter 10   A Cookie Contest and a Suitcase Full of Cookies

Chapter 11   Recipe Section

Chapter 12   Why My Mother’s Life Mattered

Chapter 13   Epilogue

Author’s Notes

Background History

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

PREFACE

M any years have passed since I lost my mother in 2009. I vividly remember the sweet scent of her kitchen: fragrant cinnamon and orange peel, browned butter and melted chocolate. Like so many of her creative accomplishments, my mother had taught herself how to cook and bake. Because she was orphaned during WWII war, she had no one to teach her these skills, but once she set her mind on mastering a task, any task, she did just that. She knitted, she sewed, she crafted, all expertly, but her baking was the skill I admired above all.

I remember my impatience while I waited for her Printen spice cookies to bake. And once she pulled them from the oven, another interminable wait until they cooled.

My mother had been forced out of school before having the opportunity to study chemistry, but even with a grade-school education, she understood the science of baking: how baking soda reacted to make a cake rise, and how the right combination of ingredients affected the taste and texture of a cookie. She knew how to coax the maximum flavor out of every ingredient and how to create cookies and cakes that looked so professional, they would have been at home behind the glass case of a fine patisserie.

As a child I was only interested in the results, not in the process of creating food. As I grew up, Mom and I didn’t bake together. Later I noticed my mother kept a book of recipes she had created, as well as recipes she had recreated from her childhood. I was an adult, the vice president of my company, when I asked her to teach me how to bake. I flew down to her home and spent weekends learning from her. As my confidence increased, I began to understand how much baking meant to her. It was more than just a way to feed others. It was her way to connect to her past. My mother spent the first fourteen years of her life in a loving home in Germany where the oven was always warm, and where her mother and aunts cared for children and the household. But my mother did not have a chance to learn baking from her family. She was one of just 300,000 people to survive the genocide of the Holocaust. Six million European Jews, including Mom’s parents, siblings, and aunts, were not as fortunate. She went through life with sorrow and anger for what the Nazis had done. But through her baking, she found a way to hold onto the traditions from her past.

She asked me, To do something with this baking. And for many years, I perfected my skills and hoped that was enough to honor her.

I feel fortunate that she spoke to me in depth about her experiences during World War II. Her hands shook as she said that she was constantly cold, hungry, and afraid. I began to attempt to prepare her recipes and heard her voice in the back of my mind, telling me, in chilling details, about her experiences in the ghettos and camps. She was imprisoned as a teenager and recalled events with such clarity I sometimes saw what she described as if it had happened to me.

These disquieting moments pass, but I hear her voice still, guiding me and urging me to do more. I started on a path of intensive research, both about the history of the Second World War, as well as the science and art of baking. I read books, watched films, and interviewed our few relatives and Mom’s friends. I scoured recipes and took baking classes. The more of an accomplished baker I became, the more I found it impossible to separate Mom’s baking from her life’s experiences.

My mother always said, You’ve got to take the bad with the good. I take this to mean that joy is often tempered by sorrow. The reverse is just as true.

I knew I could not honor my mother’s wish for me to do something with her baking without talking about her life story. Because I hear her guiding me still, I have chosen to tell much of her story in her voice. It wasn’t easy. I have long admired my mother’s resilience, how she lost everything and then rebuilt a happy and accomplished life. While writing down my mother’s history, I could not help but marvel at how brave she was to tell the difficult stories that needed to be documented. I wrote this book because I want her story to live on.

Mom’s baking was her way of remembering and preserving her culture and the love she received from her family. Writing this book helped me record her memories of surviving the Holocaust and coming to America, as well as to document her recipes for future generations. Her baking passion has become mine, and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to share it.

In putting together this book, I used my mother’s words to me, as well as stories relayed from Mom’s cousin Eugene and his family. My mother was a child at the start of the war. At times, she could not pinpoint dates, and sometimes, she could not bear to go deeply into details about traumatic events. For this book, I spoke with Mom and her cousin about their experiences, interviewed amateur and professional historians, and read dozens of historical accounts about the Holocaust. Occasionally details did not match. When this was the case, I utilized the information learned from Mom and her cousins. I’ve listed public sources in the bibliography.

Many of her recipes are intact and complete, but others lack important instructions and ingredients. Mom knew what to do, and certain things were assumed but not written. As I tested each recipe, I have attempted to fill in the blanks to clarify the recipes.

My mother’s courage and resilience have been my inspiration. I’m so thankful that, because she asked me, To do something with this baking, I grew to love baking as much as she did.

INTRODUCTION

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January 1942. Riga, Latvia

"I grieve that my mother is no longer here to tell her story. Forgive my temerity

in trying to do her justice by telling it for her." - Carolyn DuClos

M other gently nudged me. Hannelore – it’s time to go to work; you must wake up. My eyes opened, but even with the window uncovered, there was only blackness. I didn’t want to leave the tiny cot because my little sister and brother were snuggled close to me. I knew it would be far colder once my feet touched the stone floor.

The hands on the clock reminded me that it was 4 a.m. I looked through the window and noticed a line of people standing very near to one another, their thin sweaters blowing around them. Another frigid morning.

There was a time when our large family gathered in our warm kitchen for meals. We sat together and laughed and looked through the windows at the freezing winter, far enough away to ignore the unforgiving, frozen ground. Back then we celebrated birthdays with presents and joyous parties. We dressed up in our finest clothes. The kids sipped fresh cider and the grownups drank a bit of Schnapps. Our lives were happy. Everything was made more special by our Mom’s baking and the love we felt for one another. But as the Nuremberg laws took effect, Jews were forced to make sacrifices. We lost our ability to go to school or to work. One by one, the things we treasured were taken away and our happy family struggled to stay positive. I was lucky to have experienced the good times. I remember when my mother Olga made my favorite dessert, a Chocolate Spice Cake for my birthday. Because it was my special day, she sliced an extra-large piece for me. But on my last birthday, cake was a fading memory. We had no eggs, no chocolate, the smallest bit of flour and sugar. Still, we found strength in being together.

Then everything changed. A few months ago, German soldiers burst into our home with guns drawn. They screamed at us to pack one suitcase, wear warm clothes, and go outside immediately. We didn’t dare ask why. Their yelling followed us into every room as we tried to think clearly enough to grab what was important. We were frightened and knew this was happening because we were Jewish. I grabbed a card my mother Olga had given me just before she died. There was no time to think, but I hid a few small family photographs in my pocket. We didn’t know where they would take us or when we’d come back.

From there we were herded onto a train to Muenster. And from Muenster, we were packed into train compartments with other German Jews being deported. Our only choice was to stand or be trampled. We arrived six days later at the Šķirotava Station in Riga, Latvia, over 1000 miles from our home. We were weak from hunger and illness and we had been so crammed into the train cars we could barely walk. Brutal guards marched us for four kilometers into The Riga Ghetto. Anyone who faltered was beaten or shot. The Ghetto was not always a ghetto. The Germans had crowded some 30,000 Jews into a 16-block sector of the central city and bordered it with barbed wire to prevent Jews from escaping in October, 1941 to form a ghetto. German and Latvian guards patrolled the perimeter with guns and vicious dogs and aided by Latvian civilians living in the apartments on the other side of the barbed wire enclosure. They could easily see what was happening to the Jews from their side of the fence.

We passed signs warning that anyone who came close to the perimeter would be shot – no questions asked. We were shoved and kicked. Armed guards pointed guns our way and their dogs strained at their leashes. The terror of seeing their bared teeth as the dogs lurched at us and snapped, was our welcome to our new home.

Our family of nine was crowded together into one small room of an apartment. Other families filled the other rooms. We understood we were the newest prisoners of the Riga Ghetto. There was food on the table as if the previous occupants had been forced out in too much of a hurry to eat. We later learned that thousands of the last of Latvia’s Jews were murdered to make room for the German Jews.

On my first day of work, Mother gave me a slice of dry bread to take to eat. I hid it in my pocket because I knew that everyone around me was hungry, and even a kind person might be tempted to take what little I had to save himself. I was shivering with cold. My stomach ached with worry and hunger. Waiting to eat my dry bread was hard, but I knew it had to last me through all day. How I wished I could go back to the days when there was Chocolate Spice Cake, but those days were so far behind us now. I did not know what to expect next.

I’d been assigned a job as a seamstress at the camp. I liked to sew and had been sewing since I was nine. My mother Irma taught me, and I practiced by making outfits for my dolls.

When the bus arrived, the Nazis shouted to hurry and board. There were about seventy of us, mostly women. Father told me I was given the job because I was young and healthy and could sew. He said that others who’d been in this ghetto longer became sick from the lack of basic hygiene, harsh winters, and starvation diet. Sick people, older people, and children were not chosen for work assignments.

I was nervous about what was going to happen. Were we really being taken to a job? Thirty minutes later, the bus stopped, soldiers pointed their guns at us, and ordered us to enter a shed. I was terrified. Of course, I thought I would be killed. Emotion overcame me. My eyes stung, though I refused to cry.

They lined us up beside several long tables and brought over piles of bloody military uniforms. The smell of blood and who knows what else was putrid. My eyes started to run, and I felt like vomiting. A guard at our table explained that these uniforms had been stripped from the bodies of dead German and Russian soldiers. World War II had been raging for two years. He instructed us to look over the uniforms carefully, as there might still be human body parts inside. We sorted through them gingerly, separating those with too many bullet holes from those that could be cleaned and given to new German recruits. The bullet-riddled uniforms would be refashioned into blankets for the soldiers. I heard a guard saying temperatures were forty degrees below zero, cold enough to freeze water in the faucets. It was impossible to get warm.

During my first week of work, I was cleaning a uniform which had once belonged to a living, breathing, Russian soldier. I recognized the red Russian star sewn onto one of the sleeves. Inspecting the uniform for bullet holes and body parts, I found a dusky blue celluloid box in a pocket. It was about two inches square, a little worn from being carried in his scratchy wool pocket. The Russian star was embossed on the lid.

I wanted that box. I looked around to see if anyone was watching, but of course, our guards paid us little attention. Most of the Jews tried to keep to themselves to avoid attracting attention and were too afraid to look up. I opened a part of the hem in my dress and quickly stashed the box inside. Had I been caught, the punishment was unthinkable. I’d heard the older women talking about a young Jewish girl who had stolen a button. A camp guard saw her and took her away. We never saw her again.

After work, when I got home, I opened the box and found it was full of tooth cleaning powder. I felt a thrill and sewed a better hiding place into the hem of my dress. I added small pictures of my family that I had taken with me from home, along with the birthday card my mother Olga had given me for my fifth birthday.

We had no warm clothes, no soap or ability to take showers or to clean ourselves, no toothbrushes, and little to eat. I constantly felt hungry, cold, and afraid. All of this made me miserable, but now I allowed myself the luxury of opening the tooth powder box, dipping my finger in the powder, and cleaning my teeth. Being able to clean my teeth from time to time cheered me up. I guarded the box and used it sparingly. Throughout the war, my secret pocket in the hem of my dress protected the box, along with my photos and birthday card.

This is not the beginning of my story, nor the end. I feel it is vital it be told, because I was one of only 300,000 captives to survive Nazi ghettos and concentration camps. Almost six million other Jewish people did not live to tell their stories. They were brutally murdered by Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and their military and civilian collaborators. What follows is the story of my experiences during the Holocaust and how I was reborn in America.

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PART I

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THE MEMBERS OF MY

FAMILY: THE FRANKS

Me: Hannelore Frank

My father Carl Frank

My biological mother Olga Jacoby Frank

My stepmother Irma Tobias Frank

My sister Marga

My brother Manfred

My uncles Louis, Max, and Frederick

My maternal grandfather Abraham (Olga’s father). Married to Setchen

My paternal grandfather Moses. Married to