Liberated Holocaust survivors dying when given food

Factual Questions
1

[SIZE=2]Untold thousands of the liberated starved prisoners from the Nazi concentration camps[SIZE=1]* died in agony immediately after liberation, after having been given some food by well-meaning soldiers. According to an oral testimony I heard, a woman died after eating just a few sugar packets.[/SIZE]

Why was this?
If for some reason you have never seen an example of what I’m talking about, go here (you must copy the URL by hand and run it in the browser): http://z.about.com/d/history1900s/1/0/g/A/prisoner1.jpg[/SIZE]

2

I have never heard of this: survivors were eating and had some food, just not much. For the most part any who survived were in work camps designed to weaken and slowly kill while extracting some utility for the Nazis. It’s possible that feeding too much too quickly could cause them to vomit, and in their weakened state they might die, but just having some food wouldn’t do it.

In order to bring a full recovery, IIRC experiments in America showed that they needed about 4000 calories a day.

3

I have heard of this my entire life, and it’s always explained that their bodies went into shock, especially from things like candy bars.

4

Refeeding syndrome is a real complication, but it does not take place over a timespan of minutes, or with so small a stimulus as a few sugar packets.

5

Thank you for the info.

6

One thing I heard a survival expert saying was that if you’re severly dehydrated, it’s a bad idea to eat because the act of digestion requires a lot of water from an already source (your body). Don’t know how accurate that is, though, since it didn’t come from a medical type.

7

So, are there any actual historical records that indicate this occurred after the Holocaust?

8

I have definitely a first hand account (or at least a recording if it) of that, I believe from World At War.

9

In other words, no.

10

My parents, both camp survivors, wittnessed this. I heard the stories from when I was a little girl.

11

There are many. I am not going to dig out the cites/sites for you, but they are there. Here is one to get you started, albeit from a “Japanese concentration camp”: BMJ Student | The BMJ

ETA: Look at the last paragraph here: Hypophosphatemia - Wikipedia

ETA (Again): That took me 2 minutes. It’s easy if you look/try.

12

I apologize for my tone. I thought, but have since discarded the notion, that I detected a whiff of Holocaust denial. But clearly no. Sorry.

13

My aunt, for one. Are you trolling? I hope not.

14

Still, neither of those cites addresses people dying immediately after being fed tiny amounts of food. I’m certain some or even many people suffered from symptoms or died, but the number and severity of cases asked about in the OP seems exaggerated, and almost all of the evidence of actual cases is anecdotal.

It shouldn’t be too hard to find a reputable cite that talks about specific instances.

15

Your aunt has a recording in Call of Duty: World At War? The guy you are replying to was replying to a guy talking about that being where he heard about it from.

16

Ditto.

There is only one person alive in my wife and my parents’ generation; they all went up in smoke. We have only one aunt out of 20 uncles and aunts, no grandparents, weirded-out parents, etc., (that aunt ate string in Auschwitz to keep her stomach full, and upon liberation had to have an emergency operation to remove the bolus).

Hence the sensitivity of my nostrils to Holocaust denial.

Sorry for jumping down your throat. Holocaust denial is a massively egregious act for a number of reasons, and an accusation of it better be made with damn good reason.

17

Leo, we should talk someday. Our stories are remarkably similar, as children of survivors.

18

Huh? Who in this thread mentioned Call of Duty: World at War?

19

I thuoght griffin1977 had, but it occurs to me that he might have been talking about something else called “World at War”

20

Presumably he was referring to the series (technically called The World at War.)

There’s no reason that such a thing didn’t happen - someone dying immediately upon being given food. It’s just unlikely that the food was the cause. Many survivors were quite sick, and it was probably rather difficult to determine a cause of death under some circumstances.