The Atrocity of Hunger
Starvation in the Warsaw, Lodz and, Krakow Ghettos during World War II

Explores the impact of hunger on Jews – designated 'useless eaters' – in World War II ghettos, and their struggle to survive.

Helene J. Sinnreich (Author)

9781009108669, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 February 2025

308 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.448 kg

'Through victim-centered history of the Jewish experience during the war, this book is an important contribution to both the history of the Holocaust and the diversity of victims' experiences as well as to the emerging scholarship on genocidal famine. It provides rich insight into the experience of war and in particular its emotive dimensions. Focusing on daily life in three major ghettos in occupied Poland, Sinnreich explores how Jews as individuals, Jewish households, and Jewish communities exercised agency and coped - with various results - with hunger … thorough and captivating.' Katarzyna Person, Yad Vashem

During World War II, the Germans put the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland into ghettos which restricted their movement and, most crucially for their survival, access to food. The Germans saw the Jews as 'useless eaters,' and denied them sufficient food for survival. The hunger which resulted from this intentional starvation impacted every aspect of Jewish life inside the ghettos. This book focuses on the Jews in the Łódź, Warsaw, and Kraków ghettos as they struggled to survive the deadly Nazi ghetto and, in particular, the genocidal famine conditions. Jews had no control over Nazi food policy but they attempted to survive the deadly conditions of Nazi ghettoization through a range of coping mechanisms and survival strategies. In this book, Helene Sinnreich explores their story, drawing from diaries and first-hand accounts of the victims and survivors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Introduction
1. The Nazi invasion: violence, displacement, and expropriation
2. Jewish leadership
3. The supply and distribution of food: strategies and priorities
4. The physical, mental, and social effects of hunger
5. Hunger and everyday life in the ghetto
6. Socioeconomic status and food access
7. Relief systems and charity
8. Illicit food access: smuggling, theft, and the black market
9. Labor and food in the ghettos
10. Deportations and the end of the ghettos
Conclusion
Appendix: List of kitchens and food distribution sites in the Warsaw ghetto.

Subject Areas: Second World War [HBWQ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]