Food in Holland in WW2.
Tom Holloway (xuegx@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK)
Thu, 13 Feb 1997 15:20:36 +0000
Surviving in Wartime Holland (l939-l945)
Rationing became more and more severe as the war progressed
and the occupying army seized most of the food produced.
Your coupons did not go very far.
Conditions varied in different parts of the country. In the
country, if you did not produce anything yourself, you might
from time to time be able to get an extra litre of milk or a
little butter if you kept well in with a farmer friend.
A retailer, if he had anything to retail, instead of taking
money, might barter his ware for some fish caught by an
angler. Bread was baked, not with flour, but from dried
peas and you could have only one small slice per meal, two
at the most, with a little margarine and jam of a kind.
In the large centres of population conditions were far
worse. By the end of the war people were reduced to eating
tulip bulbs and it is said that young children would rub a
finger along the inside of dustbins in the hope of catching
a little edible grease.
War is cruel.
Sied de Wit
February 1997