Man Says He Knows How Dachau Inmates Felt Because He’s On Low-Carb Diet

“In terms of always wondering when you might ever feel a full stomach again, I got that.”

Givatayim, April 23 – A local resident told reporters on Holocaust Remembrance Day that because he is adhering to a regimen that restricts his intake of carbohydrates, he is better able to empathize with concentration camp prisoners who were deprived of food by the Nazis.

Enli Mussag, 38, addressed journalists at a press conference this evening (Sunday) to mark the beginning of Yom HaShoah observance in Israel. The retail apparel salesman and father of two described his diet, which limits him to no more than thirty grams of carbohydrates in any 24-hour period, and asserted that it renders him hungrier than he ever felt before he adopted the diet, putting him in position to appreciate better than others what inmates at Nazi death and labor camps faced.

“I’m constantly feeling it,” explained Mussag. “So I think I know what people at Bergen-Belsen were feeling when they didn’t get enough to eat, day after day. It’s tough. It’s probably the toughest thing I’ve ever done. So I get it. I get it.”

“I mean, I know there was other stuff going on at the same time, making it harder for them,” he continued, referring to the constant threat and presence of violent, painful death in addition to a caloric intake so paltry it forced the bodies of those inmates who survived more than a few weeks to become skeletal, and filled every waking moment with a relentless, consuming hunger. “But in terms of always wondering when you might ever feel a full stomach again, I got that.”

Mussag added that he was not ignoring several salient points that rendered the analogy less than perfect. “It’s not a one-to-one comparison, I know,” he allowed. “For one thing, I know I’m not really doing it right. I’m not supposed to be hungry all the time, because I’m supposed to be eating high-fat foods to provide me with that satisfied feeling. But often I’m just not in the mood for that, so I just end up eating less. I know the prisoners at Buchenwald and Mauthausen, for example, weren’t given high-fat foods, either, so there is that parallel.”

The incident represents at least the second time this year Mussag has compared his experiences to those of genocide victims. In January, he rebuked other staff members at his place of employment for neglecting to ensure the prompt return of items to their places of display from the fitting rooms, saying the accumulated articles of clothing and footwear called to mind the displays of victims’ attire and shoes at the Auschwitz museum.

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