Denunciations and Survival

Grossman's Life and Fate often refers to them: wives denouncing husbands, husbands wives, friends friends, colleagues colleagues, and so forth. Once you disappear into the prison system--the Gulag--it didn't matter how you got there: the system was designed to produce a large number of prisoners, who were then slowly starved to death. Sometimes spouses were jailed for not denouncing each other.

Here is the U.S. we have a different system designed to produce prisoners--poverty. We don't need denunciations, just desperation. We already imprison more people here than in any other country in the world.

It may not be fate that determines where you end up in human society--more likely chance.

Yet on occasion human kindness actually manifests itself. Only the most ruthless system can completely eradicate that. Pity, compassion, concern--it's not always easy to obliterate them. It can be done: lock some people into a room and feed them inadequately and eventually everyone will be turned into selfish monsters.

Perhaps the best you can hope for is to try to avoid, if possible, someone else's brutality, something that usually finds its victims close by, convenient.