Recipes: Arlette Baron's Fruit Cake

Lentil and Beet Soup

I was born in Paris in 1939. My mother was Hungarian and my father was Polish. My parents owned a small jewelry store in Paris where friends and neighbors gathered for tea and conversation.

When the war broke out in France my father joined the French army in the foreign battalion. He was captured by the Nazis and taken to a prison camp in Germany, where was kept alive only because he was able to repair watches and clocks for the German soldiers.

Soon after I was born people began to come to the jewelry store warning that the Nazis were starting to round up Jews in Paris. My mother sent my older sister Rene to live in a convent. I was just a baby so my mother hid me in a country farmhouse outside of Paris until the war was over. Food was very scarce so we ate mostly what we could pick from the trees in the forest. By the time I was three I would go out in the forest and fill burlap bags with chestnuts, which my mother would roast or boil. When we could no longer find any chestnuts we brought home the only other thing we could find, large mushrooms. My mother was not sure if they were poisonous so she tried them before she let me eat any. Once they were proven to be safe they became a great source for stews and other recipes.

When the war ended, my mother and I returned to Paris and we were reunited with my sister. Since we had not heard from my father for a few years we assumed that he was dead. Then one day we were returning from the market when all of the neighbors shouted "There is a surprise for you in your house!" It was my father, whom I did not know, alive and well!

Today Arlette lives in Baltimore. She has five children, including Rabbi Hillel Baron, and more than 20 grandchildren.