I think people tend to forget (or not even think about) basic logistics. We take them for granted. You couldn't do that in war time Europe and for a while afterwards while society was rebuilding itself. Europe was a very hungry place in the 40s. The war destroyed the supply lines, took all the manpower (farmers) from the farms, made many of them into minefields or cemeteries, etc, and food takes seasons to grow, harvest, and then produce into bread and consumer goods.

During the war, food was rationed and sent to the military. After the war, food was sent to those who could pay for it. So if you were a political prisoner in a camp, you didn't get good food. It wasn't just the Jews who starved in those camps. Everyone starved in those camps except the guards. And when they were released in '44-'45, no one gave them back their wealth that had been stolen. They were released broke, starving, and with nothing but those rags on their backs. Imagine trying to enter a job market now flooded with returning soldiers, you've got literally nothing, many employers still look at you as vermin after years of social conditioning, and you may or may not remember the skills you had or have an industry to go back to - because all the factories were destroyed in carpet bombing raids during the war. The starving starved more.

I'm writing this carefully, because I'm not trying to lay blame here, only to discuss the reality of war that has been true since time immemorial. The armies come in like locusts and consume/destroy everything. What's left is a wasteland and if your home is in that wasteland, life's hard for a while til you can rebuild it. Read the history of Gen Sherman's scorched earth march to the sea in 1864, or the Ottoman sieges of Kotyn or Vienna where Tatars pillaged the countryside, slaughtered the peasants, raped the women, and stole everything not nailed down.

I question the narrative because I have the narratives of people in my own family who were there. It was different in some key ways from what we were told.