What is true human suffering?

The Eucranian famine was a devastating time where people resorted to extreme measures to survive. Parents could not take care of their children, marriages suffered, and desperate peasants tried to give their children away. The good people died first, and those who refused to steal or eat corpses also perished. In the countryside, burial crews would sometimes bury the weak alive. Afterward, the bodies were devoured by savage dogs. This raises the question of how people who have lived through such horrors can trust each other and build a civil society. It seems almost impossible to achieve.