Food was in short supply in the ghetto, so in order to receive it, you needed ration cards, and in order to obtain this card you needed to be registered to work. Upon receiving the ration, a section of the card would be torn off. Complaints of insufficient food were rife amongst inhabitants and starvation was one of the major contributors to death in the ghetto.

According to Bono Wiener: “Hunger in the ghetto was a permanent part of our lives… When you don’t have enough food for weeks or for months it becomes a part of your life. You live with it, you sleep with it, you dream of it, you talk about it. So hunger was a part of the life in the ghetto even for the person who ate their (allotted loaf of) bread in one go, or the person who divided it and had a little bit (each day). We didn’t think about anything else because there was never enough… we had four years of permanent starvation. Four years – day and night – we didn’t have enough food”.