Hunger Winter

The Dutch famine of 1944, known as the Hongerwinter ("Hunger winter") in Dutch, was a famine that took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherland, especially in the densely populated western provinces above the great rivers, during the winter of 1944-1945, near the end of World War II. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas to punish the Dutch for their reluctance to aid the Nazi war effort. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived because of soup kitchens. About 22,000 died because of the famine. Most vulnerable according to the death reports were elderly men.

Hunger Winter in "The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging"
Anne Berkowitz described the Hunger Winter to the eighth-grade students who visited her. She placed most of the blame for the famine on Arthur Seyss-Inquart's refusal to see that Germany had lost the war. She and the people she'd been hiding with had used up their stored food long before the famine, and they frequently wondered if they'd survive the winter.