The Secret Starvation Study

Last week I discussed a typhus epidemic in the Warsaw ghetto during WWII.  During that same time, secret research was initiated by the Jewish doctors that was both fascinating and morbid, their ultimate gift to the scientific community.             

Germany controlled the caloric intake of the residents: it was 180 calories per day.  This is an incomprehensible number, representing one slice of bread, one potato, and one bowl of soup (mostly water).  Worse yet, this ration was provided only in return for payment, which many residents couldn’t afford.  The community was slowly being starved.

In February 1942, a group of doctors in the ghetto decided to conduct an extensive study of the physiology and pathology of hunger.  An immense research structure was created utilizing experts from numerous medical fields that included over 100 patients, a huge number as clinical studies go.  Many of the finest medical minds in central Europe were concentrated in the ghetto, so they were well suited for such a study.  Note: Jews were prohibited from engaging in scientific work; if caught, all would have been executed. 

The researchers were hungry themselves, but were not carrying out the study to save themselves.  It was conducted with the clear knowledge that they would suffer the identical fate, and, in fact, some died of hunger during the course of the research.  It is a study of incredible heroism, and it is amazing that they found the inner fortitude to carry it out at all.  It was a courageous act of defiance that gave their life meaning.  It lasted until the summer of 1942 when all residents were deported to their ultimate end. 

A copy of the study results was smuggled out of the ghetto before the deportation and remained obscure for many decades.  The results are invaluable in the field of nutrition, especially as it relates to hunger malnutrition.  The most important conclusion was that the rehabilitation process from “hunger disease,” as it was called, must be gradual.  Of immediate importance is recovering micronutrient deficiency (eg, phosphorus, magnesium, vitamins). 

If medics from the Allied liberation forces had known that, lives could have been saved.  Many concentration camp survivors died after liberation simply because they ate.  It is an appalling story.  The liberators thought they immediately needed something rich in calories, so they fed them condensed milk.  But their weakened bodies couldn’t handle the almost pure fat.

A daughter of one of the survivors relayed that when the Allies arrived in the camp where her father was and distributed food, her father said: Take care of the others, I can wait.  And that was how he was saved.  If he immediately consumed the food, he would have died on the spot like the others.

The information gleaned from the Warsaw research has revolutionized how starving children in underdeveloped countries are treated, as well as anorexic patients.  The only way to arrive at such findings was through atrocities.  Ethically and practically, it could only have been achieved at that point in history.