Starvation During The Holocaust

Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death. During the Holocaust, thousands of people died from starvation and the malnutrition it causes. Normally, the effects of starvation are bad enough, not including the many other atrocities that took place during the Holocaust, and eventually, starvation became one of those many atrocities. “By depriving the body of nutrition, starvation slowly allows the body to devour its own reserves, including muscle, fat, and organs, up to the point of complete system shut-down and death. Understanding how starvation affects the body is important to recognizing the

Hunger was one of the greatest problems; families would fight each other for food rations tearing everybody apart. For prisoners during the Holocaust, meal times were the most important times of the day. In the morning they would usually get a ‘meal’, which consisted of coffee or tea. For lunch they would have gotten watery soup, if they even got the opportunity to eat anything during lunchtime. That depended on if they worked or were busy and if their sergeant would let them eat. Lucky prisoners would find food lying around the camps or they would have people in their workplaces sneak them food. At night, prisoners would be given bread and a small piece of meat or cheese. The bread they were given was supposed to last them all night until the morning, so people would try to hide them in their beds, while they were asleep. The small rations were just meant to keep the prisoners alive so they weren’t completely starving. Many thousands of prisoners died from starvation or the illnesses caused by the lack of nutrition. Unfortunately, in the ghettos there was not any stores or shacks to buy things, so the prisoners had to attempt to steal the food. The prisoners would trade anything and everything in order to get food. The amount of food in the ghettos that was allowed varied from day to day depending on how the prisoners acted towards their sergeants. There were some times, when no food was available to any of the