This chapter explores the various methods employed by Jewish ghetto leadership and the German ghetto administration to distribute food inside the ghettos. Different ghettos used different methods at different times. Food distribution through house committees, ration cards, soup kitchen, private food stores, private kitchens, vegetable distribution points, and other methods were employed in various places at various times. In Warsaw and Krakow, a combination of rations and private provisioning prevailed while in Lodz, a ration system prevailed over private food sources. People also received food through mailed packages. All three ghettos employed communal coping mechanisms to supplement the scarce food resources through a variety of means. Food processing, particularly to minimize food waste, and agricultural projects were ways in which the community sought to expand food provisions. Soup kitchens and welfare supplemental payments were used to help supply food to the impoverished of the ghetto. Also discussed was the ubiquitous food line which was a major feature of many types of food distribution.

This chapter explores the various ways that those in the ghetto at the communal and individual level tried to support the poorest of the ghetto. This chapter discusses how charitable groups, Jewish communal organizations, Judenrat, individuals and informal networks attempted to employ many means to support those who were most economically fragile. It examines how foreign aid was able to continue to enter the ghetto albeit at a far reduced rate. It discusses how Judenrat established formal public welfare programs and encouraged the creation of private charitable programs. It also discusses private individual efforts to provide support for the most vulnerable.

Chapter 4 focuses on the strategies and policies of Dutch national food officials and the German civil authorities. While literature has traditionally focused on centralising attempts and the adverse effects of individual coping strategies on collective food security, this chapter demonstrates that the crisis also caused the Dutch and German authorities to act against their usual policies by consciously decentralising and delegating tasks to non-governmental agencies, as well as allowing certain forms of self-help.

This chapter examines relief operations, showing the difficulties humanitarian workers face from headquarters or encounter in the field as their efforts are either facilitated or constrained by economic, moral, or political considerations. Allocating aid in Ireland, Soviet Russia, and Ethiopia posed major moral, economic, and logistic challenges to the voluntary organisations involved. We identify commonalities over time, moments of change, and present a nuanced understanding of aid. Soup kitchens and camps operating under trying conditions may dominate the public imagination of famine relief, but the reality over two centuries has involved a great deal of routine bureaucratic administration: calculations of dry rations and scientific calorie counting; compiling and checking lists of recipients; mapping networks of distribution points and arranging transport; negotiating with other organisations, governments, and local partners; and monitoring, evaluating, and writing project reports.