Pork Or Wine? [Updated and Revised]

לזכות שמואל אלכסנדר בן נעכא גיטל שהשם ישמור צאתו ובואו מעתה ועד עולם ויהיה כאחד הגדולים אשר בארץ

[I thank A.F. who brought it to my attention that I goofed in the previous version. I corrected my mistake. שגיאות מי יבין].

An interesting quetion that was הלכה למעשה. A soldier in a foreign army was told that he must either eat pork or drink wine that was handled by a goy - or die. A big Rov ruled that he should eat the pork. This is a puzzling psak. Pork is an issur mi-dioraisa while wine that was handled by a goy is merely mi-dirabanan. Logic would dictate that he should drink the wine.

A possible explanation I saw: Rav Elchanan [קובץ הערות יבמות תכח]says that the Torah only permits one to transgress aveiros when the aveira will directly save one's life. However, if doing a certain aveira to save his life will lead to other aveiros not at all connected to saving his life it is forbidden to do the aveira. With this principle he explained why Rav Zecharia ben Avkulos [gittin 56a] refused to sacrifice a blemished korban explaining that people might say that it is permitted to sacrifice a blemished korban. Since the physical survival of the Jewish people was at stake why should we care what people will say? The answer is that since bringing a blemished animal now to save lives might lead to the sacrifice of korbanos with a blemish even in the absence of pikuach nefesh, we can't allow it initially [even for pikuach nefesh].  

In our case, if we allow him to drink the wine he might come to treat the prohibition lightly and drink even when not necessary. If we allow him to eat pork then we can safely assume that he will never do it again if not absolutely necessary, so we tell him to eat the pork.

עפ"י חשוקי חמד עמ"ס שבת עמ' קיז