Text Review: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

The boy in the striped pajamas. This book has brought me through a wave of emotions. I found myself on the edge of my seat at times, yelling at my screen, and even crying. This film is nearly a masterpiece in my eyes. Bruno, a young naive boy, son to his Nazi father, Ralf, befriended a young Jewish boy in his father’s concentration camp named Shmuel. Through out the movie, the two young boys grow close. Bruno sneaks off to the camp to see his new friend, Shmuel, without his parents knowing, which evidently led to his death. Bruno and Shmuel both sadly died in the gas chamber, holding hands, not knowing what was going on. Before the two died, Bruno told Shmuel that they were only in the gas chamber to take a shower. This ending was unexpected. As I had believed that this would end with the two growing up together, it sadly took a more saddening route. 

In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, there is both a large gap in injustice and in power. For power, the Nazi’s held all of the power in this siutation. They abused their power by forcing the Jewish into concentration camps, forcing them to become servants, and even killing them just because of their religion. During this time period, Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party. Convencing many young men and women to kill anyone that was not a Nazi. But, they treated Jewish worse than they treated anyone else. Secondly, Injustice was major because again, Nazis treated Jewish horrible. Almost treating them as if they were old toys destructible  rather than real people. 

I believe that the producer wanted us to understand the importance of how children are born without the idea of injustice and power. Bruno saw Schmuel as just another young boy, but behind a fence.