The Boy In The Striped Pajamas

The boy in the striped pajamas

In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews,whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma Gypsies (Holocaust Encyclopedia). Have you ever wonder how it was to live on the other side. By other side I mean to be part of the people who arrested and murder the Jews. In 2006 the Irish novelist John Boyne published a novel wrote from the stand point of aninnocent young boy.
Bruno is a 9-year-old boy growing up during World War II in Berlin with his loving mother and father. He lives in a huge house with his parents, twelve year old sister Gretel and maid servants called Maria, Lars, and the 'Cook'. His father is a high-ranking SS officer who, after a visit from Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, is promoted to Commandant, and to Bruno's dismay the familyhas to move away to a place called Out-With.
When Bruno gets there, he feels a surge of homesickness after leaving behind his family, grandparents, and his 3 best friends for life: Karl, Daniel and Martin. He is unhappy with his new home. It only has three floors, there are always soldiers coming in and out of the house. Bruno is lonely and has no one to talk to or play with and the house is sosmall that there is no exploring to be done. However, one day while Bruno is looking out of his window he notices a group of people all wearing the same striped pajamas and striped hats or bald heads. As he is a curious child, Bruno asks his sister who these people are, but she does not know. His father tells him that these people are not real people at all, as they are Jews. Gretel has changed froma normal young girl into a strong Nazi with the help of her tutor, Herr Liszt, but Bruno does not seem to take the same stance as Gretel. He still prefers adventure books to history books. There is also a soldier called Lieutenant Kurt Kotler who is violent in his ways and shows his disapproval to the Jewish prisoner, Pavel. Pavel works around the house and is always treated badly by LieutenantKotler. One day Bruno falls off his swing and Pavel helps him dress the wound. Bruno, in his naivety, asks if his mother should take him to a doctor, meets a reply from Pavel saying that he is a doctor.
Bruno finds out he is not allowed to explore the back of the house or its surroundings, and his mother forbids him to do so. Due to the combination of curiosity and boredom, he decides to explore.He went out through a shed that was on their back yard and head toward that place where people wore pajamas. He spots a boy on the other side of the fence. Excited that there might be a boy his age, Bruno introduces himself and finds out Jewish boy's name is Shmuel. He was taken from his family and forced to work in Auschwitz. Almost every day, they meet at the same spot. Soon, they became bestfriends. Bruno and Shmuel even shared the same birthday. They are basically the same person born into different circumstances, one a Polish Jew, the other a German. Over the course of the book, Bruno shows a great deal of naivety whilst his friend Shmuel seems to have more knowledge of his surroundings as he has felt the suffering first-hand.
Bruno's mother persuades his father to take them back toBerlin after a year at their new home, while the father stays at Auschwitz. The story ends with Bruno about to go back to Berlin with his mother and sister on the orders of his father. As a final adventure, he agrees to dress in a set of striped pajamas and go in under the fence to help Shmuel find his father, who went missing in the camp. The boys are unable to find him. Then the boys are mixed...