Is wanting to learn from other people's horrific ordeals greedy?

I was watching a program about the Holocaust and a woman survivor spoke of how she was often asked what she had learned from being in the camp, and how her reply was always that she had learned nothing, that there was nothing to 'learn' from the Holocaust apart from the fact it was horrific.

It made me wonder about why we often feel the need to learn through others pain in this 'grabby' manner, sometimes to the point where we slightly dehumanize the victims by almost fetishizing their ability to survive. I can think of 'celebrity' burns victims and victims of acid attacks who the UK media almost portray as having super human emotional maturity.
Why do we reward this ability to cope so much. Obviously, it is remarkable, but I think it would also a legitimate reaction for a person who has had suffered serious trauma or disfigurement to never get over it, and we shouldn't think less of them for the inability to get over it, especially when the large majority of the population can't even entertain the idea of what that experience would even be like.

Clearly it's an attempt to make sense of why such horrific things happen to people, but also, in a weird way I think 'everyday' people almost understand these horrific ordeals suffered by others with the same emotional appetite they hold for art or literature, as in, they 'enjoy' being moved by it, they enjoy the deep evaluation of their own life this contemplation engenders.

What does anyone else think?