Sarah's Key question

I felt that the "guilt" angle of the people who were able to find a good deal on a vacant apartment was a little over the top. We all benefit from somebody else's pain when we are able to find a house for sale at a distressed price. These people didn't do it! A sense of profound sadness would have been sufficient. It's only real estate!

Agree with Sharon. Feel reluctant to recommend this book because it was the most haunting I've ever read and I've been reading a long time. I still get a sick feeling in my gut whenever I think of the little brother - profoundly sad.

Some yes, but I feel like people are more inherently weak than evil. I think that most just go with it. Good or bad. As long as it is not them than who cares. It seems like most feel it would be better to say some are just born evil. Then they will be comforted by that feeling "there was nothing they could." But weak cowards can stand up, should stand up and still do not. We say they are evil, but truely they are worse. About the post regarding it "just being real estate" it was not like that. People were drug out and not allowed to take anything. Others moved in keeping the things left behind of any value and throwing the rest away. Pictures, journals, children's favorite blankies and teddy bears, memories and heirlooms that will never be reunited with those that survived. It was stolen property. It was more than benifitting from someone else's misfortune, it was benifitting from the torment, assault, murder, rape and abuse of men, women and children. It was closing their eyes to all this and saying "when can i move in?"

There's an expression, "the banality of evil." It just means, you take rights away a little at a time, so people become inured to it, so they say, well that's the way it is, and then they just let it happen. I don't think people are inherently evil, but I do think people, if they have a choice, will not act, will turn away, bury our heads in the sand. And when that happens, we allow evil to exist.