Los Gatos author Carolyn DuClos is seen here with her husband Tim last month at the Tasting House, where DuClos shared the story behind her new book “A Suitcase Full of Cookies.” The book tells how DuClos’s mother survived the Holocaust and shares her favorite cookie recipes. (Photo by Laura Ness)
Carolyn DuClos admits she was never a baker, but she and her two sisters learned when their mother Hannalore, a Holocaust survivor, decided it was time for her daughters to learn how to make the many recipes she had perfected over the years.
“She told us to bring a suitcase and meet at her house,” says DuClos, who lives in Los Gatos with her husband Tim. “We all flew in or drove with an empty suitcase. She had four baking stations all set up with ingredients for cookies all measured out, and we started in. We baked over 1,500 cookies together and went home with our suitcases full.”
When Hannalore was just 13 years old, the Nazis came to her home in Germany and told her nine family members, including her parents and her two siblings, to prepare to leave. They could bring only one suitcase. Hannalore was stalwart and proved useful for cleaning and mending dead soldier’s uniforms for reuse. She was the lone family member to survive the camps after being moved five times over a four-year period.
Hannalore arrived in Keil not expecting to survive. But in a deal worked out by the Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte, she and other prisoners were loaded onto a bus to Denmark. Hannlore carried Bernadotte’s picture with her, calling him her liberator.
After two years in Sweden, she departed for the US, where she met her husband, another Jewish survivor of the death camps. They built a new life and raised three girls, largely shielding them from the horror of their own annihilated youth.
It was when she was diagnosed with inoperable cancer that Hannalore began imploring her daughters, “Do something with this baking!”
DuClos began baking the recipes for her mother to enjoy and was relieved she passed the test. Her mom had more than cookie recipes to pass along, though: she had a message of resilience and love across the generations.
DuClos knew she needed to write a book about her mother’s ordeal and survival, and wrestled with how to do it. The book, “A Suitcase Full of Cookies,” is written in the first person, with Hannalore speaking from the pages.
Heartbreaking and inspiring in equal measure are the photos of her lost family, as well as those of Hannalore and her German girlfriends thriving after their near-death experiences as they slowly adjusted to a new “normal” life in Sweden and ultimately California. Accompanied by baking and ingredient sourcing tips, DuClos’ book shares her mother’s favorite cookie recipes, including chocolate lebkuchen, Aachner printen and pecan pillows, as well as those for German applecake, spice cake, German buttercream icing, stollen and eggnog.
DuClos said her mother constantly reminded her to take the bad with the good. During her time in the camps, her positive attitude kept her alive. She told her daughter that her constant mantra was, “I will not let them rob me of hope.”
‘A Suitcase Full of Cookies’ is available on Amazon.com.
Originally published at Laura Ness, Correspondent