Final answer:
The excerpts imply that Wiesel, akin to other Holocaust survivors and commentators, saw civilians living near camps as complicit bystanders who enabled Nazi atrocities through their indifference or passive acceptance.
Step-by-step explanation:
What the excerpts imply about how Wiesel viewed the civilians living near concentration camps can be gleaned through reflections on complicity and indifference. Primo Levi's observation, "Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions," suggests that ordinary people who passively allowed or ignored the atrocities played a significant role in enabling the Holocaust. Civilians living near the camps may fall into this category of 'bystanders' described by Ernst Klee, as many might have been aware, or at least suspicious, of the atrocities occurring within these sites of suffering. Furthermore, the forced labor of German civilians to confront the atrocities, as depicted in Figure 11.4.1, underscores the notion that civilians could not remain detached from the responsibility towards the consequences of the Holocaust. Wiesel, a survivor himself, may have shared the view held by many that the silence and inaction of these bystanders made them complicit in the horror, thereby laying a portion of the moral burden on their shoulders.