Invention of Pizza at Auschwitz

A singular circumstance that has received pitiably little publicity in the annals of culinary history, invention, and achievement is the invention at Auschwitz of pizza by a family of Italian Jews. Contrary to popular belief, the modern concept of the pizza pie is not an Americanization of an Italian tradition, but an improvisation of one Ennio G. L. C. Castanza, who, with the assistance of his wife Giulia and his son Stelvio, can alone be credited with the heartbreaking feat of the first creation of what might be termed, broadly, a pizza. What happened is that one day the commandant's wife decided to have Giulia hacked apart so as to have the poor wretch's pelvis bone fitted with wheels for use as a carriage by her obese cat, Herr Antonio. Ennio, catching wind of the cockeyed belching harpy's intentions, got hold of a pan from the scullery and ran back and forth along the vented wall of the torture shack within which the camp commandant's private carpenters, Horst and Jurgen, were quartering Giulia just like African cannibals, flinging pieces of her hither and thither to get at exactly the materials they needed. Fortunately, Ennio was able to catch on his pan several scraps of Giulia's flesh that landed on his side of the wall.

Well, Ennio and Stelvio naturally knew that without proper curing or refrigeration, these precious remains of their beloved Giulia would not last very long, and so they determined to eat them in order to keep something of her within themselves. Having the portion of flesh by itself hardly seemed sufficiently ceremonious, so a capital thing to do, they decided, would be to create a proper meal of the stuff by adding some cheese and sauce. Stelvio gladly allowed his father to slit his arm and squeeze a spritzing of blood onto the pie, while a few score of popped pustules on Stelvio's back furnished enough of a cheesy pique. The SS men, who gathered to watch and marveled at Ennio's inventiveness, even allowed him the use of one of the crematoria for the momentous baking of the pizza. It is one of my great satisfactions in life to remember that I, Benji Flakenfeld, was not only present at this major culinary event and triumph of perseverance and love, but was actually permitted to sample a slice of the world's very first cheese pustule pie. The name of the dish may have been altered to make it more palatable to American tastes, but the main thrust of the thing, I am happy to say, remains tastily unchanged.