Chapter 1 reflection

I have seen a few posts about Moshe, so I want to talk about something else.

I noticed that the Jews where always optimistic, and always made excuses for why they would not be sent to concentration camps, and the Russians would come to save them. I think they had valid reasons for believing they would be spared until Moshe came to warn them about what was to come. The part about the reaction of the Jews that amazes me the most is that nobody in the town bothered to leave. I would expect for one or two families to leave because they believed Moshe, so this is the biggest surprise for me.

However, I don't understand why the Jews still thought nothing would happen to them when they where moved into the smaller ghetto. They saw what had happened to the previous occupants, and they managed to ignore this and think they where different from the people before them. While optimism is generally a good thing, I think this shows that an extreme of anything, including optimism can be disastrous.