Vapnyar vs Wiesel

Unlike Night, and almost all stories written about the Holocaust, There Are Jews in My House is written by a non Jewish author who was born 25 years after the Holocaust. Lara Vapnyar was born in Russia in 1971 and moved to the U.S. in 1994. Because Yapnyar was born long after the Holocaust, her story There Are Jews in My House has a much different style and feel than memoirs from survivors, such as Night. There Are Jews in My House takes place in an occupied Russian town during World War II. Because Vapnyar does not have the memories and stories of surviving a concentration camp at her disposal, she instead uses broader details, and Galina's flashbacks, to tell her story. As a result, Vapnyar has less graphic descriptions and imagery simply because she did not witness the horrors that Wiesel did. I found it interesting to read There Are Jews in My House shortly after reading Night, because it is interesting to see how the writers' different backgrounds shape the stories that they write. In Wiesel's case, the reader is very close to Wiesel and his thoughts and experiences while living in the camps. In contrast, the reader is not as close to Galina in Vapnyar's story, as Vapnyar can't use experiences and memories from the Holocaust in her writing. Instead, Vapnyar utilizes fabricated "flashbacks" that Galina has to tell her story. The different influences and experiences of the two writers shape two very different stories, which are both powerful yet vastly different from each other.