On the 27th of Elul, 5701 (September 19, 1941), the Nazis
began forced labor in which one thousand Jews from the Kovno ghetto
worked daily under brutal conditions in an airfield outside of the
ghetto. They were given meager rations, and the main nutrition was a
bowl of meat soup. A few days later, during Aseres Yimei Teshuva of
5702, a number of men approached Rav Oshry with the question of whether
they were allowed to refrain from eating the non-kosher soup. They
reasoned that the lack of nutrition was not an imminent danger to them
and therefore this was not categorized as being needed for Pikuach
Nefesh. Were they obligated to eat the soup if the danger would only
emerge at some later point?