A book written in 2006 by John Boyne, a movie made in 2008 directed by Mark Herman.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a book and movie focusing on the Jewish and German background.
Let’s start in the beginning.
Bruno is a 9-year old (8 in the movie) who lived a rich life in Berlin. Bruno comes home to see his family, servants, and maids were packing up the whole home. It turned out that his father, a SOLDIER, had gotten a promotion, so they had to move to Poland.
However, the place they moved to was called the “Out-With.” From Bruno’s bedroom, he could see the Jews Concentration/Work Camp, which Bruno thought was a farm. When, in the movie, he asked what the “farm” was, and why they all wear pajamas all day.
For a 9/8-year old, that information was highly inappropriate. That was exactly why his mother decided to ignore him.
After living there for a while, he noticed big changes. His sister, mother, father, the way soldiers treated the people in the striped pajamas. He also, noticed, his mother becoming “selfish.”
One day Bruno decided to make a swing with a tire. He made one with the help of a servant, named Pavel. Bruno falls off the swing, Pavel helped him get better, and his mother takes the credit. Bruno finds this selfish, while, I think she did it so that Pavel, a Jewish servant, wouldn’t get beaten up for touching a high-born kid.
(I highly recommend that you stop reading if you get uncomfortable by brutal deaths or just brutality in general.)
One day, Bruno goes outside to explore. He runs around in the woods, having a good time until he finds barbed wires everywhere. He walks over and sees a bald little kid, his age, sitting down in the striped pajamas the “farmers” wear.
They introduce each other, as the kid's name is Shmuel. He was the same age as Bruno, which was nice.
Now here’s what I mean by “brutality.”
Bruno was walking around in the Out-With when he saw a very familiar kid in the striped pajamas cleaning the glasses in his kitchen. Shmuel.
He runs over to his friend, asking him if he was hungry, why he was here. He hands Shmuel some food, and very unluckily, while they were talking, a soldier catches them. He asks why he was talking to Bruno, and to Bruno asks why he’s talking to Shmuel. The soldier sees Shmuel chewing, and asks if he’s been stealing food. Shmuel automatically says Bruno gave him the food, and that they were friends. The soldier, horrified, asked Bruno if they were friends. Bruno obviously didn’t want to get into trouble, so he said that Shmuel was a kid he had never talked to in his LIFE and he walked in on him eating. Bruno knowing what he did was wrong, ran upstairs and started crying.
The next time he saw Shmuel, he had a swollen red eye.
Elsa, the mother, has started to think twice about her husband's job and what he was doing. Knowing the smoke in the air was burned Jews, she knew a place like the Out-With was not a compatible place for young children like Bruno and his sister. They planned to move out, and on the last day, Bruno decides to see Shmuel for the last time.
Shmuel and Bruno meet up, and Shmuel explains that his father was missing. Bruno, still feeling bad about Shmuel getting beaten up and hurt for something he did, wanted to make it up to Shmuel by offering to search for his father.
They had made a plan that in the book, he would go through a hole in the barbed wires, and in the movie, dig a hole far enough to go through the wires and the dirt. He would change his clothes to the striped pajamas that Shmuel could get, and act like a Jew to find Shmuel’s father.
During that time at Bruno’s home, people are starting to pick up the fact that Bruno was missing. Elsa starts finding for him, so are the maids and his older sister Gretel, frantically trying to find him.
Back at the camp, Shmuel and Bruno go into a hut that was led 3 seconds later into a march that leads the group of men into a gas tower. They were all told to get naked and were led into the tower that brewed gas that smelt HORRIBLE from the Out-With.
Bruno’s whole family, the soldiers, the maids, were running out onto their way to find Bruno with every trace they could find and came when Bruno inhaled the poisonous gas given to him in the tower and burned to death.
Personal Opinion:
I’m normally a person who dislikes reading, or at least that's what I say. BUT what I also say is that if the book fits my brain and motivation, I could read it in 1–2 days. This book was exactly perfect for me.
The book was outstanding. It was descriptive and very touching. It included chunks of the history of Jews and Germans and etc. I love history, and what I found interesting was the Holocaust, and how Hitler took over. German history was full of things to learn, and it was very interesting to me.
When I watch a movie based on a book, I notice many chunks are removed, since it would take too long to include every detail. And this movie was one of the most accurate ones I have seen. It included many parts in small sentences, I remembered nearly everything from the book, and it was just a chef’s kiss materialized book.
Would I recommend it? Yes, 100%.
Would I read it again? Yes.
