The discourse over the current refugee crisis in Europe reflects a common pattern in times of disaster, as observers define their role in the crisis and their perceptions of the refugees themselves. Responses range from empathy and engagement to fear and defensiveness. In a similar manner, the grim atmosphere of the famine in Syria during World War I transformed the attitudes of those who lived through the crisis, causing them to reassess their own lives and their role in addressing the suffering that surrounded them. Observers of the famine despaired at the perceived decline in morality and the growing indifference towards the suffering of the poor, even as they themselves exhibited remarkable shifts in attitudes and opinions in their effort to cope with the horrors of starvation and the grinding monotony of the war. Although the lives of the non-suffering have been generally neglected in the study of the wartime famine, their diaries, memoirs and letters are a rich repository of information about how it was to actually live through the crisis, and the emotional toll that long-term exposure to calamity can have on individuals and society. A close reading of these sources indicates that attitudes and beliefs, like so many other aspects of life, began to adapt to the internal logic of the crisis. Over time, many famine survivors began to adopt and assign temporary situational identities that reflected their experiences in the famine and the ways they coped with it. Inevitably, the poor bore the brunt of this process of de and re-humanization, particularly as the disjuncture between the lives of the suffering and the secure sharpened in the latter years of the crisis. These reinterpretations began to shape social interactions in society and even alter the relative value of human life in such grave matters as public administration, death and charity.