The “Food Supply Department” allocated food to Germany via wartime rationing. The same organization allocated food to Jews in the ghettos.
“Ernahrungsopfer” was the donation and sacrifice of food for “self-sufficiency” and so Germany could “achieve an independent foods supply” – both euphemisms for wartime deprivations caused by the constant carpet bombing of German cities throughout the war.
The “Ernahrunghilfswerk” or “Food Welfare Organization” even collected food refuse for animal feed.
By all accounts, food was extremely scarce throughout the war. Starvation was fairly commonplace in those days. Over ten million Germans starved to death during the Great Depression (none of them Jews) and 40-50 million worldwide starved to death during World War II, primarily in Russia and Eastern Europe on account of the extremely cold winters.
It was impossible enough to feed everybody in the best of times. Even before the war started, Germany was always on the brink of starvation. The primary reason for their expansionist hostilities was to secure more land so they could be self- sufficient in food production.
As efficient and careful as the Germans were, their resources could not function with the widespread destruction of rail lines throughout Germany and nearby regions by the allied bombing. There simply was not nearly enough food to go around.
In the modern day, military offensives to destroy the infrastructure of nations are always accompanied by massive humanitarian efforts to maintain food and medical supplies to the civilian population. This was not so during World War II.
Alternately, the people leave the combat zone in droves and find shelter in refugee camps. The German people, almost to a man, did not leave; they were loyal to the very end.
The inevitable result was that those at the bottom of the food chain – Jews in work camps who became incapable of working – suffered the consequences. The allied bombings killed the Jews, in this sense, as fate would have it.