Was kosher food available to the Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust? Was is/was the rabbinical opinion on this and the effect on those Jews?
Uncut, uncooked fruits and vegetables are kosher. I doubt that the Germans gave them any meat. Bread may or may not be.
In any event, if no kosher food is available and one is in danger of starving, one is not only allowed, but required to eat non-kosher food. A Jew is not permitted to starve himself to death because of a lack of kosher food.
Zev Steinhardt
Ah Zev, just the person I was hoping would answer!!
Thank you for your answer! In actuality, I should know the answer to this (being a Jew, okay, well, a converted one, myself) but I had no idea what they were fed, etc.
From what little I’ve read, concentration camp victims were fed some watery soup, and bread if they were lucky.
During High School while we were studying the Holocaust, a number of survivors came to the school to speak of their experiences. Many of them worked at the Holocaust Museum that’s nearby and had a lot of things to show. From their account, they were given a watery sort of gruel made of mashed unidentifiable grains, and yes, a mealy bread if they were so lucky. Any of those unfortunate souls who worked in the house of the magistrate ( for lack of a better term ), I believe had better chances for food, though I wholly doubt it was kosher.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nazis had purposely fed the un-Kosher foods.
A guy I know went through some concentration camps. He said the Germans gave them some sort of salami-like food (unkosher, of course). This guy’s older brother encouraged his younger siblings to eat it, but couldn’t bring himself to eat it himself. He eventually weakened and got sick, which meant the gas chambers.
Recently on a radio programme a guy who was a prisoner of war in china (I think he was promoting his book) said somehow he got the cushy job of working in the kitchens. He then found out that the meat they were being given in a weak watery broth was actually human meat. His ethical dilema was to tell or not to tell. If he told, he ran the risk of the other prisoners not eating and dying. Most of the other prisoners were European, so there could well have been some jews amongst them. How would eating humans or dying be viewed? Same as any other non-kosher food if death is the alternative?
Just wondering.
My guess would be that eating human meat would be preferable to starving; however, murdering the humans to eat their meat would NOT be preferable, it would be better to starve than to commit murder.
“Missionary Stew.” Any other Ross Thomas fans?
My father was in the Navy during Korea and he said that many of the Jews he served with would dump ketchup on a non-kosher meal and dub it “kosher” at that point. As in all cases where one finds their normal dietary choices unavailable, I’m sure that many Jews opted to eat non-kosher food in order to survive, while others didn’t.
Your guess is 100% correct.
Zev Steinhardt