No. Nor was there any mention of fava beans or a nice Chianti.
Currently I am reading The Holocaust: An Unfinished Story. The author mentions the liberation of the camps. Toward the end, the Nazis marched concentration camp survivors away from the front, and into other camps. The whole was chaotic and disorganized. Any supplies for the prisoners were sporadic (and low priority). When the Allies liberated the first camps, they found not just inmates that had been there for years, but others who had survived forced marches for hundreds of miles, barely fed. The camps were severely overcrowded for what they were originally designed and diseases were rampant. It does not mention feeding problems, but does say that the first troops and doctors on the scene had to go from body to body to find the some still living among the dead for those not moving.
The only mention I see is:
Although the Allies - the British at Belsen and the Americans at Dachau, Buchenwald and Mauthausen - have been criticized for implementing the wrong feeding regimes and allowing too many survivors to die […this] fails to appreciate the complexity of the situation and the unprecedented nature of what was found…
If there was an inordinate number dying after liberation, it was also from the continuing effect of serious diseases (typhus and tuberculosis especially) on the severely starved. Thanks to groups like UNRRA they organized quickly to deal with the horror of the siituation.
Towards the end of the Second World War, on 15 April 1945, the 11th British Armoured Division entered the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany. The Army began the huge task of clearing the dead and organising the camp, but the military doctors struggled to find an appropriate food regime to help the estimated 60,000 starving and sick inmates. A Medical Research Council team, led by Janet Vaughan (1899–1993), was sent to assess the value of using hydrolysates, or concentrated protein preparations, an experiment she described as ‘practising science in hell’.
On the day after the liberation of the camp, a convoy of water tankers and three-ton lorries arrived, carrying cooking equipment and supplies. The first food given to the inmates was ‘compo’ rations, designed for active soldiers, a stodgy diet of tins of meat, vegetables, fruit, puddings, butter, cheese and jam. Apart from the acute distribution problems, which meant many of the bedbound inmates were overlooked, it soon became obvious that the rations were wholly unsuitable. Horrifically, some of meat was pork, culturally inappropriate (and offensive) for the largely Jewish camp population. For most of the prisoners the diet proved to be far too rich, too much for their shrunken, weak intestines: many of the inmates couldn’t keep the food down, there was a renewed outbreak of vomiting and diarrhoea and it was later estimated 2,000 people died as a result of being given this initial, wrong diet.
Dame Janet Vaughan treating survivors of Belsen: ‘practising science in hell’ | RCP Museum
I had an uncle who was a POW in Germany. During the winter of 1945 they were forced into a death march away from the Eastern Front towards the west (and partly back again when the Western Allies got too close). Starvation became a problem after months on foot in the winter with no shelter at night.
On being liberated, they were put into a convalescence camp on limited rations. But some men would go thru the mess line, eat, then sneak around and go thru again. Vomiting and diarrhea ensued.
Get those when you’ve been in a death camp would quickly turn fatal for many.
Minnesota Quaker Starvation Experiment
Shout out to the conscientious objectors in World War II. American heroes who walked tall and killed no one.
Hear, hear. That experiment is mentioned in The Wager, too.
Could (and I am not Jewish) the principle of Pikuach nefesh might apply here-
Non-kosher food
Non-kosher food may be eaten under the following circumstances:[citation needed]
** If no kosher food is available to the person, and failure to eat the non-kosher food may result in starvation*
As depicted in Art Spiegelman’s Maus:
He didn’t specify “Call of Duty”. Perhaps you are unfamilar with it, but there was a documentary made about WWII called The World at War which did, indeed, mention refeeding syndrome and I assume that is what the poster was referring to.
It is possible that some of the people assumed to have died from eating tiny quantities of food were already dying, either of starvation or other causes, and died for those reasons rather than because they consumed a bit of sugar or candy bar.
Re-introducing substantial quantities of food to someone nearly dead of starvation has to be done with some caution to avoid complications. It’s not that they can’t eat, they have to eat small quantities at first and work up to full meals again. See the wiki on refeeding syndrome.
In 2005 due to a severe gastrointestinal illness I went a week with nothing by mouth. My initial eating when I was sufficiently recovered was carefully monitored and involved very small quantities of food, starting with broth and moving on to more solid food when there were no problems with that. With proper supervision and care getting back to eating isn’t that big a deal but carelessness can cause severe illness or death.
As refeeding syndrome was known about at the time I suspect some cases were prevented by people knowing to be cautious in re-introducing the starving to food. Some cases probably did occur, given that there were millions of people starving. Instances of illness from re-introducing food too quickly did occur in population in Lenningrad and Stalingrad, although I am not aware of deaths attributed solely to that.
If it’s a matter of life or death Jewish dietary rules are suspended. Indeed, most rabbis and other authorities I’ve heard discuss the matter said that in such circumstances not only is eating pork permitted, it is required because preserving life takes precedence over keeping kosher.
Although a devout and observant Jew would probably still not be happy eating pork to survive.
Try to imagine the situation.
These were people who had been brutalised in unimaginable ways; more than half-starved and suffering from various diseases. I would guess that their religion played a large part in their very survival and being offered pork might well have been the last straw for many.
True.
Well, for some… others became atheists. The aftermath of such a trauma is complicated and variable. In any case, the concept of preserving life coming before nearly all other commandments is something very well known in Judaism. And it’s not just pork that’s not kosher, quite a few other things are, too, even if they’re edible. People in the camps would do things like eat insects even though they are just as forbidden as pork. There were other humiliations, too - tattooing is forbidden as well, yet everyone in the camps was forcibly tattooed. Judaism does make a distinction between choosing to be tattooed and a situation where you are inked against your will, or where refusing would result in your death. In the camps Jews could not keep kosher, they could not observe the sabbath, they were forced to violate a lot of their 613 rules. The idea that eating pork to keep from starving to death would be the red line is a little out there. Once they were liberated and no longer starving, of course, a still-observant Jew would go back to following those rules but I’ve never heard of a survivor being criticized for breaking any of the taboos while in a Nazi camp.
And male prisoners were shorn of their Talmudically mandated beards and sidelocks.
Slight factual correction to this. Tattoos were used at Auschwitz, nowhere else.
Even being on a relatively short fast (compared to mistreated prisoners, anyway) can put you at risk of refeeding syndrome. I just broke my fast of seven days tonight, with a couple of small glasses of homemade broth and a small amount of mulberry juice. Tomorrow I plan on some carefully portioned smoothies, and Saturday I’ll be doing the same, with a gradual increase to normalcy.
Refeeding syndrome is mentioned in this article, about the liberation of a man allegedly held captive for more than 20 years in Waterbury, Conn.
If you can’t open the link, the relevant portion of the article reads: “According to [a caregiver], he will need extensive physical rehabilitation — court documents state he has deformed knees and muscle wasting — and a carefully managed diet to avoid re-feeding syndrome, where a sudden flood of nutrients can kill a person near starvation…”
A previous discussion on this subject;
After a couple of days, I found stuff like that so close to inedible that I did actually start starving. I found myself out of energy, slowing to a drop, and unwilling to eat.
One of my books describes a similar ration for use on emergency callout, with the description “at first, this might not appeal to everyone. But after a couple of days, it won’t appeal to anyone”
There is a Wiki article on this.