Making a (Not-So-Kosher) Seder in Berlin

This I found interesting, from a gastronomical point-of-view:-

You would think it would be easy to pull together a Seder in Berlin, since many typically Jewish foods are mainstream German fare too: potato pancakes with applesauce, poppy-seed cake, rye bread. Sauerbraten looks and tastes a lot like brisket. Even matzo balls bear a striking resemblance to Knödel, starchy balls that are usually served as a side dish with gravy. But the devil is in the details. Knödel, for instance, are made with bread. While many variations are available — whole wheat, spelt, potato flour — unleavened meal of any kind is impossible to come by. (Conversely, when my husband made a traditional German Christmas meal for my family in Cambridge, Mass., last year, duck breasts and red cabbage were easy to find, but when he asked for Knödel mix at Whole Foods, he was led directly to the wide range of matzo meal in Aisle 4. But that's another story.. . .)

And so, in the spirit of potluck, my Seders involve more than a little improvisation. One year, as a symbolic gesture, I ordered a frozen kosher lamb bone for the Seder plate from Munich, but that was overdoing it. We use nonkosher meat from the local organic butcher. The tsimmes is made from sweet potatoes tracked down at a Thai market near our apartment. In the States, chopped liver is made with schmaltz, which poses a problem here: Jewish schmaltz is made from rendered chicken fat, German schmaltz from pork; I use olive oil. One friend makes great horseradish with beets from scratch. Another, who comes from five generations of Jews in Atlanta, makes haroset with grape juice instead of kosher wine. My friend Patricia glazes the roast lamb with Turkish pomegranate syrup. (Berlin has one of the biggest Turkish populations of any city outside of Istanbul, so Turkish products are widely available, and many of them, including freshly baked macaroons, are perfect for Passover.) Handmade chocolate-covered walnuts and an incredible array of dried-fruit delicacies come from the Greek store across the street from me. What appears to be a jewelry store behind KaDeWe, Berlin's largest department store, turns out to be an Israeli food depot selling delicious baba ghanouj and, yes, matzo.

And then came this sledge-hammer addition:-

After we bought our apartment, my husband and I had all the wallpaper stripped and the original walls replastered. In our daughter's room, we found paintings of characters from fairy tales: a blue Puss in Boots, Hansel and Gretel, a grandmother and her gingerbread house. Based on the last layer of wallpaper removed, we were told that these paintings were made around 1930. I went downstairs and asked my oldest neighbor, a man who was born in the building, about the people who lived here then. "A Jewish family," he said. "Almost everyone in our building was Jewish before the war." Then he told me how they had been rounded up in the courtyard and taken away. He didn't remember the event himself, he said, but his mother had described it, and the image had always stayed with him.

[Hmmm. My second Holocaust posting today]