Survival and Stress

Students explore how the body responds when food is limited and stress continues over long periods of time. Building on the survival responses introduced in the previous lesson, students investigate how prolonged stress and malnutrition affect body systems. Moments from David’s and Rose’s experiences provide context for understanding how survival conditions can influence energy levels, thinking ability, and overall health.

Lesson aim: Understand the biological effects of prolonged stress and malnutrition.

Guiding Questions

• What happens in the body when food intake is limited for long periods of time?
• How does prolonged stress affect the body and brain?
• How do survival conditions impact energy, concentration, and physical health?

Materials

• board or projector
• Survival and Starvation SurvivalStarvation_PPT
• cause and effect worksheet (Handout_CauseEffectChart)
• optional: devices for additional research
• excerpts from narratives
• printed or digital copy of the following article “Auschwitz: Starvation and Slave Labour of Prisoners.” Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum,

Preparation

Prepare a simple explanation of how the body uses glucose, fat, and muscle as energy sources during starvation. Select excerpts from the narratives that reference food scarcity, exhaustion, or prolonged stress.

Lesson Activities

Introduction

Begin by briefly reviewing the previous lesson on the fight, flight, and freeze response. Remind students that the body reacts quickly to danger through the nervous system and stress hormones. Explain that while these responses are designed to help people survive immediate threats, the body can experience different effects when stress continues for long periods of time.

Explain that in survival situations, access to food may also be limited. When this happens, the body must adapt in order to keep functioning. Limited nutrition and prolonged stress can both affect how the body and brain work.

Connect this idea to the narratives students have been studying. Remind students that David and Rose experienced long periods of uncertainty, fear, and limited resources during the Holocaust as young people. These conditions would have placed significant strain on the body over time.

Explain that today’s lesson will explore how the body responds biologically to prolonged stress and limited food, and how these survival conditions can affect energy levels, thinking, and physical health.

Energy and Survival

Using the Survival and Starvation SurvivalStarvation_PPT as a guide, explain how the body normally uses glucose from food as its primary energy source. When food intake is limited, the body begins using stored fat for energy and eventually muscle tissue if the shortage continues.

Discuss how malnutrition can affect the body, including fatigue, weakened immune function, slowed growth, and difficulty concentrating. Explain that these changes occur because the body is trying to conserve energy and prioritize survival.

Cause And Effect of Survival Stress

Have students read the following article, “Auschwitz: Starvation and Slave Labour of Prisoners”. Provide students with a cause and effect worksheet (Handout_CauseEffectChart). Students connect survival conditions such as limited food, constant fear, and lack of rest to biological responses in the body. Students explain why these bodily responses occur using the biological concepts discussed in the lesson.

Applying Biological Effects to Narrative Moments

Provide students with excerpts or panels from A Different Kind of Resistance and Two Roses that describe moments involving hunger, exhaustion, fear, or prolonged stress. Ask students to revisit their chart and add additional entries using evidence from the narrative excerpts. Students should identify the situation occurring in the scene, the likely biological response in the body, and explain why that response would occur based on the scientific concepts discussed in the lesson. Encourage students to focus on how conditions such as limited food, lack of rest, or ongoing fear might affect the body’s energy levels, concentration, and overall health.

Conclusion

Review how prolonged stress and limited nutrition affect the body. Emphasize that while the stress response is designed to help people survive immediate danger, long-term survival conditions can place significant strain on the body and mind.

Additional Resources

Survival and Starvation SurvivalStarvation_PPT

cause and effect worksheet (Handout_CauseEffectChart)

“Auschwitz: Starvation and Slave Labour of Prisoners.” Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum