Was just skimming Anna Reid’s new book, Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 (Walker & Co. 2011), and on pp. 274-275 found this passage re: the partial evacuation of the city in early 1942:
“…Diarists describe queuing for hours for soup, being unable to find anywhere to sleep, and fighting for places on the trains onwards through unoccupied Russia. Nor, when food was available, were measures initially taken to prevent the starving from killing themselves by overeating. A doctor ordered to set up a medical station at Zhikharevo discovered that evacuees were immediately eating all the dry rations - smoked sausage and bread - given them for the three-day journey onward to Tikhvin, and bursting their stomachs… Having described the results of his autopsies he persuaded [Soviet officials] that evacuees should instead be fed in small quantities en route, with millet and semolina cooked in the train boilers.”
The story comes originally from Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin, A Book of the Blockade (Hilda Perham, Moscow 1983), pp. 435-438.
How disturbing. But, to clarify, this isn’t the same thing as the “refeeding syndrome” mentioned above, right? It’s just straightforward gorging until the stomach bursts, which could kill anybody, right? Although … would someone suffering from chronic malnourishment be more prone to this kind of thing because their stomach would be smaller than usual?
This is the sort of story that one suspects could have significantly grown with the telling. Consider the sequence fo events:
A - Allied soldiers liberate a concentration camp
B - They find hideously emaciated, starving prisoners in horrifying conditions
C - They give the prisoners food
D - Some of the prisoners die
The fact that D followed C does not necessarily mean C caused D. One would assume a mistreated, starved person could die from any number of things, and might have died no matter what. But the memory of the people present will naturally tend towards assuming a cause and effect relationship, and the flashbulb-memory nature of such a shocking experience would really sear it into your brain. And of course, over time, the number of prisoners who died immediately after being fed would probably grow the more the story was told.
I recently finished Scott Turow’s very good WWII novel Ordinary Heroes (Warner Books 2005). On p. 430, the U.S. Army has liberated a German concentration camp, and two Americans walk among the emaciated prisoners:
“Some of those we passed, with their scraps of clothing and impossibly vacant looks, begged for crumbs. [Lt.] Grove [who had been there since the day before] warned me not to oblige them. The troops who arrived yesterday had given candy and tinned rations to the first inmates they saw. Rioting had broken out and then several of the prisoners who’d won the grim struggle that ensued had died when their intestinal systems revolted as a result of their gorging.”
Turow acknowledges in an afterword that this is a fictionalized version of the Balingen concentration camp; he also drew on accounts of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen (p. 491). He does not provide a citation for this particular incident.
I know of someone in real life and modern times that due to a stroke(unknown at the time) couldn’t swallow so wasted away for months and months with little nutrition or water.
When hospitalized finally they were put on a feeding tube and IV saline drips, they experienced problems with this including massive edema. The explanation offered was that their body and in particular kidneys were not only in bad shape from the wasting but had adapted to the minimal input. Then when they were flooded by normal intake it took a while to adapt back and recover.
The concentration camp prisoners were dying from malnutrition, overwork, and diseases at the rate of 6-8 people per hour in spring of 1945.
Those bodily physical conditions had developed over months. Having the camp suddenly liberated isn’t going to change that death rate immediately. The overwork will stop, and better feeding will commence, but the body can’t recover immediately.
And I can easily see a sudden change to a good diet after months of starvation bringing on serious situations. I’ve often given myself a bout of diarrhea at the start of sweet corn or bing cherry season. I’m in good physical health, so it doesn’t hurt me much. But given the weakened condition of many of those prisoners, that would have easily caused their death.
I think many of the stories about people dying after eating are due to coincidence. Given the death rate of one death every 8-10 minutes, plus the fact that soldiers are likely to have picked out one of the most stricken people to give 3 packets of sugar to, her death after eating it was likely unrelated to the sugar. She was probably at the point of death already. At least the soldier with his sugar managed to give her a bit of kindness before she went.
Cite? Need to know more, otherwise that number is kind of meaningless in the universe of concentration camps, extermination camps, and methods.
For example, people whipped from train car to gas chamber I presume are not “prisoners,”–or are they when this number was devised? Auschwitz-Birkenau was doing 12,000 people a day by that time.
This is a video with actual interviews from the chief medical officer and some junior doctors at the liberation of Belsen. They talk about how “feeding the starving could do more harm than good” and the “Bengal Famine mixture” which was a pretty disgusting mixture of glucose and other substances that even the starving refused to eat at first. They do not say that anyone actually died from being fed, but since they were surrounded by the dead and dying, that is hardly surprising.
I just got a long fundraising letter from the National Museum of the Surface Navy in L.A., which includes a description of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during WWII (as mentioned in Jaws). One survivor of the sinking, pulled from the Pacific after four and a half days afloat, is described as being “given a long, painful shower, fed fresh water from a teaspoon so his stomach would not burst, and then [he] slept for 24 hours straight.”
There is mention in David Grann’s The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, about the shipwreck of a British warship in 1741, about two near-starving sailors dying after too greedily eating lots of seal meat.
Liver is high in vitamin A. The liver of certain animals, including the polar bear, bearded seal, fish and walrus, are particularly toxic (see Liver (food) § Poisoning). It has been estimated that consumption of 500 grams (18 oz) of polar bear liver would result in a toxic dose for a human.
Note that the wiki article on Dachau, post liberation, does not mention anyone dying from food, but some from typhus. The same with Auschwitz.
I have known, from search and rescue, that we were told to feed slowly and in small amounts as often if fed too much their shrunken stomachs would vomit it all back up. On someone as frail as the survivors were, that could be fatal, I guess.
That could well be due to what i just mentioned.
I like this hypothesis.
From the wiki article on Belsen- Immediately before and after liberation, prisoners were dying at around 500 per day, mostly from typhus. and The British troops and medical staff tried these diets to feed the prisoners, in this order:[31]
** Bully beef from Army rations. Most of the prisoners’ digestive systems were in too weak a state from long-term starvation to handle such food.*
** Skimmed milk. The result was a bit better, but still far from acceptable.*
** Bengal Famine Mixture. This is a rice-and-sugar-based mixture which had achieved good results after the Bengal famine of 1943, but it proved less suitable to Europeans than to Bengalis because of the differences in the food to which they were accustomed.[32] Adding the common ingredient paprika to the mixture made it more palatable to these people and recovery started.*