A Comparison Of Brownings Night And Elie Wiesel's Night

From two different perspectives, Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, and Christopher Browning, a historian of the German perpetrators, have different prospectives of the Germans who were involved in the Holocaust. Wiesel’s Night focuses on the story of an actual survivor and his journey, where as Browning’s Ordinary Men focuses on the German Order Police from judicial interrogations. Both books depict how each party is mentally and physically ruined from the Holocaust and the encounters they endure.

Wiesel tells the story of how Eliezer and his families physiological and physical journey through the Holocaust, which parallels Elie’s own story. “Anguish. German soldiers—with their steel helmets, and their death’s head emblem. Still, our first impressions of the Germans were rather reassuring. The officers were billeted in private houses, even in Jewish homes. Their attitude toward their hosts was distant, but polite” (Wiesel 9). This shows how the people in the ghettos had no idea what the Germans goal was they entered the community. Their first impressions were of relief, not horror and fear. This creates a false sense of security and does not foreshadow what the Jews are about to endure from the Germans. At first, all Hitler wanted

Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, shows how the Germans mass exterminated the Jews out of Germany. He also tells his story of the atrocities he saw and endured for survival through Night main character Eliezer. On the other hand, Browning shares the stories of the German perpetuators, specifically German Order Police. Even though Wiesel would probably never feel empathy for the German perpetuators, many of the Order Police were once ordinary men who had no intentions of killing, with some who eventually enjoyed killing. This shows that those of the German Order Police and the Jews were psychologically ruined