the boy in the striped pyjamas book review guardian

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas author defends work from criticism by Auschwitz memorial

After airing his worries about ‘Holocaust genre’ fiction, John Boyne has been accused of ‘perpetuating dangerous myths’ himself

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The Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust memorial museum has said that John Boyne’s children’s novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas “should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches the history of the Holocaust”, after the author criticised the spate of recent novels set in the concentration camp.

The museum made the comment after Boyne criticised the current ubiquity of novels with names such as The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Saboteur of Auschwitz, The Librarian of Auschwitz and The Brothers of Auschwitz. Boyne had tweeted: “I can’t help but feel that by constantly using the same three words, & then inserting a noun, publishers & writers are effectively building a genre that sells well, when in reality the subject matter, & their titles, should be treated with a little more thought & consideration.”

The research centre at the former Nazi death camp in Poland responded by saying that “we understand those concerns, and we already addressed inaccuracies in some books published”: the organisation has laid out at length the issues it has with Heather Morris’s bestselling novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz , which it has said “contains numerous errors and information inconsistent with the facts, as well as exaggerations, misinterpretations and understatements”.

But the memorial went on to link to an essay warning readers away from Boyne’s story of a German boy who befriends a Jewish boy on the other side of the Auschwitz fence.

The critical essay, which is from the Holocaust exhibition and learning centre , says that many people who have read the book or watched the film adaptation of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas believe that it is a true story – despite its subtitle, “A Fable”. It stresses that “it is important to understand that the book is a work of fiction” and “the events portrayed could never have happened”. It goes on to lay out “some of the book’s historical inaccuracies and stereotypical portrayals of major characters that help to perpetuate dangerous myths about the Holocaust”.

In response, Boyne queried what he said were factual inaccuracies in the piece: “While I absolutely respect your right to recommend some books & to discourage the reading of others, it’s worth pointing out that the opening paragraph of the attached article contains 3 factual inaccuracies in only 57 words. Which is why I didn’t read on,” he wrote on Twitter to a chorus of growing criticism, adding that he believes that he “treated the subject matter with great care in my novel, although readers are of course free to feel differently”.

“All I said was that the Auschwitz Museum was linking to an article – not an article that THEY had published or written – that addressed supposed inaccuracies in my novel which, of course, was a work of fiction … and therefore by its nature cannot contain inaccuracies, only anachronisms, and I don’t think there are any of those in there,” Boyne told the Guardian on Tuesday.

The Irish author has previously been the subject of online criticism over his novel My Brother’s Name Is Jessica . “I may not always get it right, no one does, but I’d rather give it my best shot every time than be someone who gets their kicks by tearing strangers down through phone & thumb and then walking away with a smug smile thinking, ‘I told him,” he wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “The ‘new dictators’ try to define discourse, control literature & instigate online attacks. Perhaps they feel voiceless but screaming like jackals rather than talking like humans isn’t helpful. After 20 years of publishing novels, I know that real writers write from the gut, regardless of the abuse that comes their way.”

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Reviews of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

by John Boyne

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• Historical Fiction
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• 1940s & '50s
• Jewish Authors
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Book Summary

Germany 1942: Bruno's family moves to a new house, where he he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own. Their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.

Berlin 1942 When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.

Chapter One Bruno Makes a Discovery

One afternoon, when Bruno came home from school, he was surprised to find Maria, the family’s maid — who always kept her head bowed and never looked up from the carpet — standing in his bedroom, pulling all his belongings out of the wardrobe and packing them in four large wooden crates, even the things he’d hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else’s business. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked in as polite a tone as he could muster, for although he wasn’t happy to come home and find someone going through his possessions, his mother had always told him that he was to treat Maria respectfully and not just imitate the way Father spoke to her. ‘You take your hands off my things.’ Maria shook her head and pointed towards the staircase behind him, where Bruno’s mother had just appeared. She was a tall woman with long red hair that she bundled into a sort of net behind her...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Discuss the relationship between Bruno and Gretel. Why does Bruno seem younger than nine? In a traditional fable, characters are usually one-sided. How might Bruno and Gretel be considered one-dimensional?
• At age 12, Gretel is the proper age for membership in the League of Young Girls, a branch of Hitler’s Youth Organization. Why do you think she is not a member, especially since her father is a high-ranking officer in Hitler's army?
• What is it about the house at Out-With that makes Bruno feel “cold and unsafe”? How is this feeling perpetuated as he encounters people like Pavel, Maria, Lt. Kotler, and Shmuel?
• Describe his reaction when he first sees the people in the striped pajamas. What does Gretel mean when she ...
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Review contains plot spoilers : The Boy In The Striped Pajamas is presented as a fable, flagging to the reader up front that one is expected to disengage ones normal sense of reality and accept the story as given, but in this instance, when dealing with such an emotive, well recorded and historically recent subject as the Holocaust, this is difficult to do. Everything hinges on the reader accepting Bruno's overwhelming naivety at face value. Is it really credible that nine-year-old Bruno, who lives and goes to school in Berlin and is the son of a senior SS officer, is oblivious to the war, and doesn't know who Hitler is, or what a Jew is - but in other respects is both observant and intelligent? When his family arrive at Aushwitz, Bruno and his 12-year-old-sister are conveniently the only children in the vicinity, other than those on the other side of the fence. This again stretches credibility because historical records show that about 6,000 SS officers were posted at Auschwitz, so it seems extremely unlikely that other children would not have been around. Then there is the issue of how Bruno could possibly have talked with his friend on the other side of the fence for months without being seen, or ever comprehending that Shmuel is starving (he absentmindedly brings him food from time to time but usually ends up eating most of it on the way). Not to mention the inconvenient detail that by 1942 most young children arriving at the camps were gassed on arrival. On the other hand, Boyne hits a few powerful notes - such as Bruno's father's response to his question about the people inside the fence - "they're not people at all Bruno"; and his mother's comment that "we don't have the luxury of thinking". As a fable, this is a powerful tale, and if you can read it as such all well and good (I can't); but as a vehicle for explaining the defining tragedy of the 20th century to young people it falls embarrassingly short... continued

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Beyond the Book

A brief history of auschwitz.

Auschwitz was the name the Germans used for the Polish city of Oswiecim when they occupied it in WWII. The concentration camp was established nearby in June 1940, taking the name of the nearby town. The camp quickly expanded into three main parts: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz - a group of about 40 sub-camps. In 1942, when the mass exterminations began, the camps (the largest complex of extermination camps in the Reich) became the site of the greatest mass murder in the history of humanity, with the majority of the arrivals being gassed on arrival in the Birkenau gas chambers. Between 1.1 to 1.6 million people were killed there, about 90% were Jews, plus many Poles, Soviet prisoners-of-war and Roma (gypsies)...

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas #1

The boy in the striped pyjamas.

226 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

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Boyne says: I think the most frequent criticism of the book in the years since it’s been published is that Bruno is too naive. People say: “He’s verging on the stupid – how could he not know?” For all the criticisms you can make, I always feel that’s the wrong one because he’s grown up in a house with his father wearing a uniform, so I always think why would be question it? There wouldn’t be any motivation for him to suddenly turn around… if your father came home wearing a doctor’s uniform every day, you wouldn’t turn around one day and ask: “Why are you wearing that?” So, Bruno is kind of representing that blindness, in a way. When he goes to the fence, and when he asks that question, he is kind of representing the rest of us who are trying to understand the Holocaust and find some answers to it. Also, when the camps were liberated, the world was surprised through 1945 and 1946. The majority of the Holocaust had taken place over four years and, granted, it was a different information age but I still maintain that in those sorts of movies, the naivety is appropriate. It’s based on real life. From: http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Books-Re...

Lincoln's doctor's dog. An archaic reference in the publishing industry to the notion that the way to ensure a book is a bestseller is to write about Lincoln, dogs, or doctors. This prompted one author to title his book which is about publishing in the 1930s Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog. - From www.metaphordogs.org

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The boy in the striped pajamas, common sense media reviewers.

Intense, powerful Holocaust book offers unique perspective.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

This can help kids connect with the historical eve

Clearly, there is evil presented. But readers will

Readers will quickly relate to Bruno, who is uproo

Implied violence though none graphically shown. Bu

Parents need to know that even though the main character in this book is 9 years old, this book is a better fit for kids in late middle school and up. The book focuses on complex emotional issues of evil and the Holocaust, and raises questions about the nature of man. It could spark a great moral discussion. But kids…

Educational Value

This can help kids connect with the historical events of the Holocaust in a more realistic way. Could also lead to some great discussions about evil and the nature of man.

Positive Messages

Clearly, there is evil presented. But readers will be touched by the power of friendship and compassion.

Positive Role Models

Readers will quickly relate to Bruno, who is uprooted from his home and moved somewhere "nasty and cold." His perspective allows readers to feel a strong sense of foreboding, long before they know the extent of the terror surrounding Bruno's world. Readers will be struck by the contrast between Bruno's normalcy and naivety, and the extreme horrors of the time.

Violence & Scariness

Implied violence though none graphically shown. But the book is set in a death camp so emotional violence is a real factor to consider when your kids read the book. The ending involves very upsetting death.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that even though the main character in this book is 9 years old, this book is a better fit for kids in late middle school and up. The book focuses on complex emotional issues of evil and the Holocaust, and raises questions about the nature of man. It could spark a great moral discussion. But kids will probably be very moved if not quite upset by some of the events in the book. Its theme is complex and powerful, and it will provoke emotions and questions that will need discussion and explanation. We recommend that you talk with your kids after they've read the book, or even read the book together.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (19)
• Kids say (129)

Based on 19 parent reviews

Powerful and emotional story

A quality text for mature kids and early teens, what's the story.

When Bruno is forced to move away from his enormous Berlin home with his family, his life changes forever. Besides moving into a smaller house with no "nooks and crannies" to explore, besides having no one to play with except for his older sister (also known as the "Hopeless Case"), he's surrounded by soldiers that are constantly in and out of his father's downstairs office as well as other grown-ups who always seem angry or unhappy. Bruno misses his friends, his grandparents, and the city itself. And he doesn't understand what's going on around him. He hates everything about "Out-With" and is very lonely until he meets the boy on the other side of the fence.

Is It Any Good?

This powerful book about the Holocaust stands out in part because of the unusual perspective. It's told through the eyes of the 9-year-old son of the commandant at Auschwitz, a boy who has no clue as to what is going on around him. This perspective allows readers to feel a strong sense of foreboding, long before they know the extent of the terror surrounding Bruno's world. Readers will be struck by the contrast between Bruno's normalcy and naivety, and the extreme horrors of the time.

Readers will quickly relate to Bruno, who is uprooted from his home and moved somewhere "nasty and cold" where he has no friends; he is lonely, his sister bugs him, and adults treat him as if he's not there. He wants to study art and read fantasy books rather than history and geography. He wants to get outside and explore. At one point Bruno even covets the life of the boy on the other side of the fence because at least he has other boys with whom he can play.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about World War II and the Holocaust. How is reading a story different than reading about facts in a history book? Which do you find more moving? Which are you more likely to remember?

How would the story be different if it were told from another point of view?

Book Details

• Author : John Boyne
• Genre : Historical Fiction
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : David Fickling Books
• Publication date : September 12, 2006
• Publisher's recommended age(s) : 12 - 12
• Number of pages : 215
• Last updated : July 12, 2017

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Wednesday 7 April 2010

Review: the boy in the striped pajamas.

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The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

Hope and Despair in the Shadow of Auschwitz

Publisher: David Fickling Books

Genre: Historical Fiction

First Publication: 2006

Language:  English

Major Characters: Bruno, Gretel, Shmuel, Lieutenant Kotler, Pavel Bruno’s Mother and Father, Eva Braun

Setting Place: Berlin, Germany and Auschwitz, Poland

Narration: Third person omniscient

Theme: Innocence and Ignorance, Family and Friendship, Holocaust

Book Summary: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

When his father is promoted to Commandant in the German army and his family is transferred from their comfy home in Berlin to a strange place called Out-With, nine year-old Bruno has no idea of the true nature of his new surroundings. Indeed, he is also unaware of the horrors being perpetrated at the command of the German leader, the Fury, who visits the family one evening. He is unimpressed by the small man with his tiny ineffectual moustache.

The dreaded concentration camp as seen through Bruno’s eyes is simply a place of many, many long huts and the people who wear an odd sort of striped pyjamas. Starved for company, Bruno’s explorations lead him to meet a new friend, Shmuel, a boy his own age who, for reasons Bruno cannot understand, looks like a small sad bony caricature of a normal boy. Bruno’s innocence and his friendship with Shmuel will ultimately have catastrophic results on his life and that of his family’s.

Book Review: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne is truly an amazing yet daunting novel that I will never forget. The author John Boyne did a masterful job of depicting the setting in such vivid detail and exposing the events in a manner that I felt a constant emotional pull as the story unfolded and impending doom lingered on the horizon.

I was recommended this novel a while back while reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak , but after finishing that story and experiencing such deep sadness, I knew I couldn’t jump into another novel about the Holocaust for quite some time. I’m glad I waited because as with other works that cover this topic, distance and perspective is key. I feel the author did a grand job of juxtaposing two resounding themes in such a flawless manner; one being of the evil that was the Holocaust; against the second theme that of the innocence of a child.

“What exactly was the difference? He wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”

I thought it was brilliant of Boyne to tell the story from the perspective of a nine-year-old German boy as you experience the events of this abominable and unthinkable time in history as a mere complicit bystander, which ultimately leaves you with a sense of hopelessness.

The story unfolds the day Bruno arrives home to discover his family is moving from Berlin to Auschwitz where his father will serve as a Commandant for the concentration camp. Bruno is forced to leave his three best friends for life and discovers that life in Auschwitz is lonely and desolate. All that changes the day he meets a boy his exact age and they begin to forge a friendship over the course of year. However, as much as he finds he and Schmuel have in common, living on opposite sides of the fence proves to have a devastating consequence to their friendship.

“The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you’ve found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard.”

After completing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, I did some research on the author and the novel and found that he not only received well-deserved praise for this book but also harsh criticism. As with any piece of literature, when words are committed to page and presented to an audience for their interpretation, there will be varying degrees of acceptance and backlash. Couple that with such a sensitive topic and you’re bound to get a reaction. Well, my hats off to John Boyne for tackling a story through a unique perspective and presenting a poignant fable that, as a reader, willingly suspended my reality and experienced the events in a way that exposed my emotions and feelings to such a raw level.

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THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS

by John Boyne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2006

Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point.

After Hitler appoints Bruno’s father commandant of Auschwitz, Bruno (nine) is unhappy with his new surroundings compared to the luxury of his home in Berlin.

The literal-minded Bruno, with amazingly little political and social awareness, never gains comprehension of the prisoners (all in “striped pajamas”) or the malignant nature of the death camp. He overcomes loneliness and isolation only when he discovers another boy, Shmuel, on the other side of the camp’s fence. For months, the two meet, becoming secret best friends even though they can never play together. Although Bruno’s family corrects him, he childishly calls the camp “Out-With” and the Fuhrer “Fury.” As a literary device, it could be said to be credibly rooted in Bruno’s consistent, guileless characterization, though it’s difficult to believe in reality. The tragic story’s point of view is unique: the corrosive effect of brutality on Nazi family life as seen through the eyes of a naïf. Some will believe that the fable form, in which the illogical may serve the objective of moral instruction, succeeds in Boyne’s narrative; others will believe it was the wrong choice.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006

ISBN: 0-385-75106-0

Page Count: 224

Publisher: David Fickling/Random

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT HISTORICAL FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

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Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together. 

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Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...

Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.

Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra , but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra —can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

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Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the boy in the striped pajamas.

In his Author's Note, John Boyne writes of his fourth novel, THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS: "the issue of writing about the Holocaust is, of course, a contentious matter, and any novelist who explores it had better be sure about his or her intentions before setting out...it's the responsibility of the writer to uncover as much emotional truth within that desperate landscape as he possibly can." Given this fairly strong sentiment, Boyne has written a definitive novel about this much-explored --- though often not explored well --- subject, but his approach is one that might be considered controversial, and rightfully so. A book billed as a "fable" about the Holocaust --- especially one narrated by the son of a prominent Nazi leader --- is bound to ruffle a few readers' feathers, especially those of the older generations.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS opens as nine-year-old Bruno comes home from school to find that he is moving. Following his parents' dinner with "the Fury" (i.e. the Fuhrer) wherein the Fury tells Bruno's father that he "[has] big things in mind for him," Bruno and his family gather up their belongings from their five-story house in the heart of Berlin and move to "Out-With" (i.e. Auschwitz) in Poland where Bruno's father is called "Commandant" by everyone around him. Bruno hates his new desolate surroundings compared to the opulent comfort he is used to and wants to return to Berlin immediately. Of course, this doesn't happen.

As the plot progresses, Bruno slowly gets used to his environment. Before long, he becomes bored with his indoor trappings and decides to go exploring along the barrier that separates his family from the hordes of "neighbors" on the other side of the fence. He is curious about the "hundreds of people in the distance going about their business...wearing the same clothes as each other: a pair of grey striped pajamas with a grey striped cap on their heads." On one of his jaunts, he befriends a boy his age named Shmuel and visits him daily, often sneaking leftover food for him from the kitchen. It turns out that he and Shmuel were both born on the same day and the two become quite close from the commonality.

(As far as what happens to Bruno and Shmuel...to give away the ending would be to spoil the impact of the book and whatever gnawing gut reaction is bound to follow its conclusion. This is truly a climax worth waiting for and one that shouldn't be spoiled for the sake of a review.)

What makes THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS different from just any old friendship-in-the-midst-of-tragedy story is that Bruno and Shmuel are from two glaringly dissimilar backgrounds and are living two disparate lives in close proximity to each other, yet they consider themselves equals. What makes it different from many (if not all) other Holocaust stories is that it's told through the eyes of a German boy --- the son of the man put in charge of Auschwitz by Hitler, no less --- who has absolutely no idea what's going on . Bruno is blissfully unaware of the atrocities taking place around him and nothing --- not even what he sees with his own eyes --- seems to alter his seemingly permanent naiveté.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS is a bundle of fascinating conjectures, questions and contradictions, many of which beg to be examined and will surely ignite any number of heated conversations about the nature of reality, perspective, prejudice and more. John Boyne is a masterful storyteller who, through the eyes of Bruno, has attempted to tackle and put forth his version of one of the most heinous periods in human history. It remains to be seen where readers' opinions about the novel will fall, but this nonetheless is a worthwhile and profound journey that most should take to find out.

Reviewed by Alexis Burling on October 23, 2007

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

• Publication Date: October 23, 2007
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction , Holocaust
• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Ember
• ISBN-10: 0385751532
• ISBN-13: 9780385751537

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Book Review

The boy in the striped pajamas.

Readability Age Range

• David Fickling Books, a division of Random House Children's Books
• Winner of various Irish children's book awards

Year Published

This book has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine .

Plot Summary

The story is told from the viewpoint of a 9-year-old German boy named Bruno. Bruno is the privileged son of a Nazi commandant during World War II. Bruno comes home from school one afternoon to discover his belongings packed and set near the door. His family is preparing to relocate from Berlin to a place Bruno believes is called Out-With. In reality, his father will be in charge of the prison camp Auschwitz.

Bruno is not at all happy about the move, especially at leaving behind his three best friends. He is quite lonely and doesn’t understand why he can’t play with the children that he can see from his window at Out-With, children all dressed in the same striped pajamas. Then he realizes they aren’t all children, but also men of all ages, all wearing the same striped pajamas.

Bruno tries to entertain himself around the house since his parents don’t want him to do any exploring. He and his sister have lessons at the house instead of going to school. Eventually, Bruno decides to sneak out to explore the area. He meets a boy his age named Shmuel. Shmuel wears the striped pajamas and lives on the other side of the fence.

Shmuel and Bruno begin to meet every day. Bruno is thrilled to have a friend his own age, yet never fully grasps why Shmuel can’t play at his house or why Bruno can’t play with the other children in striped pajamas.

After a little more than a year and a bout with lice among the children, Bruno’s mother decides she can take no more of the isolation and plans to leave. Bruno and Shmuel make plans for one last day to go exploring where Shmuel lives. Bruno’s head is shaved because of the lice, so he will fit in when Shmuel brings him pajamas. Bruno meets Shmuel, changes into the pajamas and crawls under the fence to help Shmuel find his papa, who hasn’t been seen for days. As the two boys are searching, the guards round them up with many other adults into the middle of the camp.

Believing they were going on a march, Bruno and Shmuel stick close together inside the group and march into an airtight building with many other Jews. That was the last anyone ever heard of Bruno.

His mother eventually returned to Berlin with his sister. Bruno’s father was ordered to leave Out-With with other soldiers. He eventually figured out what had happened to Bruno.

Christian Beliefs

Other belief systems.

When Bruno asks his father about the people outside his window (the prisoners at Auschwitz), his father says that they aren’t people at all.

Authority Roles

Bruno is not allowed to question his parents or the decision to move to Out-With, but once, in an outburst, he tells his father how awful he thinks it is. His father tells Bruno he is very brave for speaking his mind, but that he is becoming insolent. He orders Bruno to stop talking about the move.

Everyone is respectful to the point of being frightened of the German authorities. Bruno knows he should respect Lieutenant Kotler, a young soldier, but he has a hard time since Lieutenant Kotler always calls him Little Man.

We learn that Bruno’s grandparents were against the promotion that led his father to be in charge of Out-With. When he accepted the position, it alienated Bruno’s family from his grandparents. Bruno had been close to them previously.

Profanity & Violence

Bruno tells Shmuel that his sister hits him sometimes. Bruno is inadvertently herded into a gas chamber with his friend, Shmuel, and is never heard from again.

Sexual Content

Bruno doesn’t understand it, and it is never said out right, but the book implies that Bruno’s mother has an affair with Lieutenant Kotler.

Discussion Topics

Get free discussion questions for this book and others, at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books .

Additional Comments

Lying: Shmuel is sent to Bruno’s house to do some work in preparation for a party. Bruno sneaks him some food. When questioned by Lieutenant Kotler if he has been eating, Shmuel denies he has been eating. When he finally confesses, he says that Bruno gave it to him. Bruno denies knowing Shmuel.

Secretive/deceptive behavior: Bruno goes to meet Shmuel every day for months after his parents specifically told him not to go near the fence or the camp, or to walk the direction that he went. Bruno sneaks Shmuel food every day.

Producers often use a book as a springboard for a movie idea or to earn a specific rating. Because of this, a movie may differ from the novel. To better understand how this book and the movie differ, compare the book review with Plugged In’s movie review for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas .

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

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Holocaust Memorial Day: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas ‘may fuel dangerous Holocaust fallacies,’ says new study

Novel by john boyne is widely used in schools despite historical inaccuracies, article bookmarked.

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A new academic study has claimed that the bestselling novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas may fuel “dangerous fallacies” about the Holocaust .

First published in 2006, John Boyne ’s book focuses on the friendship between a Jewish boy imprisoned in Auschwitz and the son of a Nazi commandant. It was adapted into a film in 2008.

Research conducted by University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education (provided to The Guardian ) revealed that 35 per cent of teachers in England use The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in lessons covering the Holocaust.

However, the book was more frequently used by Drama and English teachers than those teachers History.

Critics of the book have claimed that it engenders misplaced sympathy with the Nazis, something that was found to be the case in research conducted five years ago.

The report claims that the novel holds a “somewhat contested position as a potential educational resource”.

Claimed the study: “While most young people who took part in the study recognised the narrative as a work of fiction and many were able to identify and critique its most glaring implausibilities and historical inaccuracies, they nonetheless overwhelmingly characterised it as ‘realistic’ and/or ‘truthful’.”

Stuart Foster, the executive director for the Centre of Holocaust Education, said that Boyne’s work of fiction was not to blame, but rather the use of it within an educational context. “In an era of fake news and conspiracy theories, it’s very worrying that young people harbour myths and misconceptions about the Holocaust,” he said.

Criticisms of the novel date back more than a decade. In 2009, a study by the London Jewish Cultural Centre claimed that 75 per cent of respondents believed The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas to be based on a true story.

In 2020, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum stated that the book “should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches about the Holocaust” due to its historical inaccuracy.

Responding to the new study, Boyne told The Guardian : “ The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is deliberately subtitled ‘A Fable’, a work of fiction with a moral at the centre. From the start, I hoped it would inspire young people to begin their own study of the Holocaust, which in my case began at the age of 15 and continued in the decades that followed.

“As a novelist, I believe that fiction can play a valuable role in introducing difficult subjects to young readers, but it is the job of the teacher to impress upon their students that there is legitimate space between imagination and reality. By relating to my central characters, however, by caring about them and wanting no harm to come to them, the young reader can learn empathy and kindness.”

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• Students Featured Content

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas – a book review by Giorgia N.

• Posted by Giorgia N.
• Categories Students Featured Content
• Date June 1, 2017

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS

The Mystery of the Other Side of the Fence

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, written by John Boyne in 2006, is a historical dramatic novel which is set during the Second World War when Hitler, the Fuehrer, dominated Germany and created concentration camps all over Europe to exterminate Jews, considered inferior to the rest of the human beings. In other words, this clearly is a book on the victims of the Holocaust, which uses imaginary people to represent the atrocities that happened during the Second World War, by showing the reader two points of view (a Jewish one and a German one).

Bruno (the protagonist of the story) is a young boy, aged nine, who lives with his mother, father and sister Gretel in Berlin. Suddenly, because of his dad’s job (which is unknown at the beginning of the story) they have to move to Poland. Their new house, “Out-with” is not very nice, but there is something out of Bruno’s bedroom window which is very intriguing, something on the other side of the fence: he can see some soldiers, who are laughing and having fun and many children who are all standing close together with their heads facing the floor. All of them have something in common: they all seem to wear the same striped pyjamas. The soldiers’ behaviour show dominance and importance, whilst the children are passive and oppressed, they don’t seem to have confidence.

Throughout the story, Bruno meets a Jewish boy named Shmuel (aged just like him) who comes from the other side of the fence. The two kids become friends and every afternoon they meet, they sit down and they talk. Though the barbed-wire fence of the camp separates them, the boys begin a forbidden friendship. Bruno doesn’t know that Shmuel is a prisoner of the concentration camp he can see from his bedroom (Auschwitz) and that his father is a commandant of the camp, and that he works every day for Hitler.

Bruno and Shmuel had always wanted to play together but, because of the fence that separated them, they never really manged to. So one day, Bruno, who loves exploring, decides to help Shmuel to find his Papa, who has suddenly disappeared. He goes on the other side of the fence, where he can actually see Shmuel without any physical separation between them.

What will happen in the concentration camp? Will Bruno totally understand what is going on and who his father really is? Will he manage to get back home?

Bruno, a very curious boy who likes exploring, is an interesting character because of the friendship he develops with Shmuel, the way in which he directly disobeys his parents, and the way in which he changes from a naïve and innocent child to a more understanding and understanding friend.

The second main character might be Shmuel, maybe because he is Bruno’s new best friend. He is a very mature boy for his age, even if he hides his real destiny in the concentration camp not to terrify his friend who doesn’t know anything about the extermination of the Jews.

Father is another important character. He is a commandant of Auschwitz and he works for Hitler (who actually came to dinner at his house in Poland). He is a cold man who is proud of his job of being a soldier and he doesn’t want to tell Bruno about it. He dresses as a soldier and he makes the people around him feel insecure, oppressed and passive. He is not actually considered the antagonist of the story because he loves his children and he doesn’t want them to know about his terrifying job.

Gretel, Bruno’s older sister, is considered the “Hapless case” because of her annoying behaviour and by her way of feeling better than her brother because she is older than him. Even if she is described as a spoilt girl, and she nearly always quarrels with Bruno, she has feelings and she actually loves her brother very much.

Some rhetorical devices used by Boyne are:

• Foreshadowing (already indicating a future event that is going to happen in the story) – Bruno has just moved house and his bedroom is facing a concentration camp and he doesn’t know where he is and why. The author will then explain everything throughout the story.
• Repetition (repeating the same words or phrases a few times to make an idea clearer) – the author uses it to emphasise and remind some things. This also gives the idea of being a parable or a story for children.
• Third person limited POV – Boyne writes in third person, so out of the story, but, because Bruno is the main character, the writer concentrates and has more relevance on Bruno’s points of view.
• Cliff-hangers (keeps the reader with bated breath, so he wants to know what is going to happen in the next chapter) – at the end of chapter two, the author leaves suspense by not letting the reader understand what Bruno and his sister are going to see.

I personally think that this historical novel is a very good book for everyone to read because it is simple so even children can easily understand it.

Even if it uses a simple story, it expresses deep meanings.

So, I like Boyne’s book because I find it interesting and it hooks the reader straight away.

My favourite part is understanding the friendship between Shmuel and Bruno, I particularly like how Shmuel tries to hide the horrible truth from his friend not to make him feel upset and sorry for the people in the camp who are suffering also because of his father. It is as if the two boys are brothers thanks to their young but true friendship.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this book to every kind of audience because it talks about a sad truth through a simple and childlike story. It makes you reflect about the atrocities which happened in that period and why they shouldn’t happen again.

Tag: Book review , Holocaust

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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

By john boyne.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne is a unique children’s novel that tells the story of Bruno, a young German boy.

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

The novel was published on January 5th, 2006. It’s generally categorized with young adult books, but it’s also very popular with readers of many different ages. In fact, some young readers may struggle with some aspects of the subject matter .

The novel begins in 1943 in Berlin, Germany , before taking the reader to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the main character, nine-year-old Bruno , meets Shmuel, a boy imprisoned on the other side of the camp’s fencing.

Spoiler Free Summary

In ‘ The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ,’ readers are introduced to a young boy named Bruno, whose father is a high-ranking Nazi officer. When the novel starts, the family is living in Berlin in a large house, but then Bruno’s father is assigned to work at Auschwitz. There, he meets another little boy, Shmuel, who lives on the other side of a tall fence and wears striped pajamas. The novel unfolds in shocking and horrifying ways that have serious repercussions. 

Full Summary of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Spoiler alert: important details of the novel are revealed below.

‘ The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ‘ by John Boyne opens with a description of nine-year-old Bruno, who has a strong and colorful imagination. He’s growing up in Germany during World War II but has no real concept of what that means. He spends his days reading and exploring his family’s huge home in Berlin. He tries his best to follow his parents’ strict rules and to make sure he avoids his older sister, Gretel, who is very different from he is. 

The novel reveals that Bruno’s father is an officer in the Nazi Party, but Bruno, again, doesn’t understand what that means or what his father is doing on a day-to-day basis. In Berlin, he has several friends who he cares about and who he misses dearly after he’s forced to move, with his family, to a new home. 

His father is starting a new job, and Bruno knows nothing about it. They’re going to be living in a smaller home, one that is far lonelier and colder than their home in Berlin. 

In an important scene, Bruno looks outside the window and notices that there is a large fence with people behind it. It’s revealed that this is Auschwitz, or as Bruno says, “Out-With.” This is only one example of Bruno’s age making it difficult for him to understand where he is and the work his father does. 

Bruno is told that the people outside are “not people at all,” a chilling comment that is one noteworthy allusion to the underlying ideology that Bruno has zero understanding of. He continues to dislike his new home, trying to get others to join in in his complaints about it. But Maria expresses fear at the concept and says that Bruno’s father took care of her and her family during a difficult time. 

Time passes, and Bruno meets Pavel, a servant who used to be a doctor and who tends to a scraped knee he gets. Bruno finds himself curious as to why someone who is so intelligent would work as a servant. 

As more time passes, Bruno starts walking along the fence outside his bedroom window. He meets another boy on the other side named Shmuel. He’s wearing the striped pajamas that all the people on the other side of the fence wear, and the two become friends. Shmuel tells Bruno as much of his own story as he understands, explaining that he and his family had been forced to move to the camp on the other side of the fence against their will. 

Bruno continues visiting Shmuel at the fence and notices that his new friend is getting skinnier and skinnier as each day passes. Bruno starts bringing the young boy bread and cheese, hoping to help him. Later, Bruno finds his friends in his own kitchen, helping prepare for Bruno’s father’s birthday. This comes as a shock, but Bruno sees no reason why he couldn’t give his friend some chicken to eat. 

He does, and the cruel Lieutenant Kotler admonishes him for it. Bruno pretends not to know Shmuel, and the novel suggests that he was beaten for eating the chicken.

A year has passed at this point, and Bruno’s mother is getting frustrated about the limited nature of their life there. She finally convinces her husband that she should take the children back to Berlin, where they can have a real life. Bruno tells his friend what’s going to happen and feels sorrow over the fact that the two never really got to play together. 

Shmuel follows up Bruno’s bad news by telling him that his father has gone missing. 

They make plans to meet one more time. Shmuel is going to bring Bruno his own pair of striped pajamas, and he’s going to sneak in through a small opening in the fence, hoping to help Shmuel find his missing father. They search around the compound for a while, and Bruno decides that it’s time for him to go home. 

Just at that moment, a group of soldiers comes around the corner, rounding people up. They take Bruno and Shmuel, along with many others, on a march into a dark building. They’re locked inside and hold hands with one another. Bruno tells Shmuel that he’s his best friend. He’s never heard from around, and his father eventually pieces together what happened to his son when he finds his clothes on the outside of the fence where Bruno slipped through. 

He’s heartbroken about the loss and mourns his son, giving up on his job and the demands it makes on him. 

What do Bruno and Shmuel symbolize?

The distance between the two boys and their friendship symbolizes how a true friendship knows no real barriers. Bruno breaches the barrier between the two and tries to help his friend in a desperate moment. The two know nothing of the animosity between the Nazis and all those that they’ve imprisoned. 

What is ironic about the ending of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ?

There is a clear, very dark example of irony at the end of ‘ The Boy in the Striped Pajamas .’ Bruno, whose father is a Nazi officer, dies by the very means that the Nazis came up with to kill the many marginalized groups they imprisoned. 

What is on Shmuel’s armband?

The armband that Shmuel wears in the novel has a star of David on it. It was worn by all Jewish citizens during this period in history. It’s contrasted against the armband that Bruno’s father wears, which has a swastika on it. 

Is The Boy in the Striped Pajamas a true story?

No, ‘ The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ‘ is not a true story, but it could’ve been. It’s based on historical events, including the fact that the commandant of Auschwitz lived next to the camp with his children. 

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About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

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New Times, New Thinking.

The moral corruption of Holocaust fiction

John Boyne’s shameless sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas exemplifies a genre that expunges the genocide of its horror, and its Jewishness.

By Ann Manov

In his 1998 essay “Who Owns Auschwitz?” the survivor and Nobel Prize-winning author Imre Kertész grappled with the problem of how to represent the Holocaust in literature and film. The paradox he expressed was that “for the Holocaust to become with time a real part of European (or at least western European) public consciousness, the price inevitably extracted in exchange for public notoriety had to be paid”. That price was the Shoah’s “stylisation”: its transformation into either “cheap consumer goods” or “a moral-political ritual, complete with a new and often phony language”. In both cases, he argued, the Holocaust gradually becomes the realm not of reality, not of history, not of jaw-dropping, thought-defying tragedy, but of kitsch.

Kitsch has indeed come to dominate the field – from the Broadway adaptation of the  Diary of Anne Frank to Schindler’s List . At the other end of the spectrum, masterpieces, often by survivors – Primo Levi, Paul Celan, Jean Améry – tend towards aesthetic and intellectual rigour, resisting closure and withholding comfort. Much of so-called “Holocaust fiction” is aimed at children and included in the “Holocaust curricula” that are mandatory in many jurisdictions, though fatally handicapped by a refusal to show children violence or even darkness. In the years since Kertész’s essay, however, a micro-genre of Holocaust fiction for adults has proliferated:  The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Librarian of Auschwitz, The Violinist of Auschwitz.  Unlike the children’s fare, these have no excuse for their optimism. 

That John Boyne was not included in Kertész’s list of offenders is surely a matter only of timing: just a few years later, in 2006, Boyne’s children’s book  The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas  would exemplify the terrifying commercial drive to expunge the Holocaust of its horror, and its Jewishness. Its plot revolves around the nine-year-old narrator, Henry, who is confused and sad after his Nazi commandant father relocates the family to Auschwitz (which he pronounces as “Out-With”, a pun that does not make sense in German; he also calls Hitler “the Fury”, though he’s nine and perfectly capable of pronouncing the word Führer). He has no idea what’s going on, even though it was no secret that Jews were being deported to occupied Poland. Our innocent little Henry befriends a boy his age, Shmuel, who’s always hanging out by the perimeter fence – weird, given that he would more likely have been performing slave labour and would have been immediately shot if found attempting escape. They share snacks that Henry takes from his kitchen (Shmuel, despite being from Krakow, a highly developed city, and fluent in Polish and German – Yiddish is never mentioned – has only eaten chocolate once). Inexplicably, Henry doesn’t much question why Shmuel is bald, emaciated and imprisoned along with his entire family, which, by the way, is “disappearing” one by one (somehow Shmuel is  also  unaware that people are being executed). Henry crawls under the fence to help Shmuel look for his dad, and the two boys are immediately swept up in a death march and led into a gas chamber. Henry squeezes Shmuel’s hand and tells him he’s his best friend “for life”, and they are promptly murdered. When Henry’s family realises he is dead, they are sad.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas   may read like a paint-by-numbers parody of Holocaust fiction, yet it has sold more than 11 million copies, been adapted into a major motion picture and become the most assigned Holocaust novel in English schools, with the Centre for Holocaust Education at University College London finding that 35 per cent of teachers used it in lessons about the Holocaust. And this in spite of the fact that, according to the centre’s study, it has “contributed significantly to one of the most powerful and problematic misconceptions of this history, that ‘ordinary Germans’ held little responsibility and were by and large ‘brainwashed’ or otherwise entirely ignorant of the unfolding atrocities”. Boyne has, of course, defended his work, telling the Guardian that by relating to his central characters “the young reader can learn empathy and kindness”. OK.

With his latest treacly tome  All the Broken Places  – complete with title so maudlin it preempts all mockery – Boyne has gifted us with a Holocaust novel so self-indulgent, so grossly stereotyped, so shameless and insipid that one is almost astonished that he has dared.  The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas  at least was written for children. One anxiously waits to see how this grown-up sequel performs.

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So far, it has been hailed as “ a powerful novel about secrets and atonement after Auschwitz ” in the Guardian  and lauded in hundreds of positive reviews on GoodReads. As with the preceding novel,  All the Broken Places  has a heavy-handed, pedagogical plot. If the moral of  The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas   was “don’t murder Jewish little boys lest your non-Jewish one be killed”, that of  Broken Places  is “if you were complicit in the murder of Jewish little boys, you may be absolved if you later prevent the murder of at least one non-Jewish little boy”. Boyne resumes the story with Henry’s naughty older sister Gretel – now 91– gradually, and tediously, relating her life up to this point. (I advise against reading this book, but if you insist on doing so be warned that the remainder of this paragraph contains “spoilers”.) At the end of the war her father was immediately hanged, and she and her mother emigrated to Paris. They dated French guys, but then had their heads shaved in a humiliating ritual. Gretel said a lot of things like “We’re guilty too”, and her mother said a lot of things like, “Your father’s crimes! His. All his. Not mine. Not yours”, and “Those filthy Jews!” Anyway, Gretel emigrated to Australia, where she fell in love with a Treblinka survivor she didn’t even realise was Jewish. (He, apparently, wasn’t too curious about a “Gretel” in post-war Australia.) Once her past was revealed he left her, but his friend – a historian, of course! – subbed in. Now Gretel is a crotchety, rich widow in London. A new family moves into her building, with an abusive husband who threatens to kill his cute son. When Gretel tells him not to beat his wife, he whines, “But she can be so annoying.” Gretel threatens to turn him in, and he threatens to reveal her Nazi past. She murders him and finishes the novel in prison, which she says is not too bad. 

[See also: How Donald Trump rose to power ]

Kertész bemoaned the way Holocaust art devolves into the dutiful repetition of “certain words”.  What are they? Boyne suggests a few contenders. How many times does  All the Broken Places  refer to the “truth”? Forty-two. Guilt? Thirty-six. Past? Thirty-four. Trauma, horror, and monster get ten uses each. The dialogue is leaden and expository: “My daddy’s not a monster”; “It doesn’t matter any more. It’s all in the past.” The narration is bloated and risible: “He was gone. Louis was gone. Millions were gone”; “I had witnessed too much suffering in my life and done nothing to help. I had to intervene.” 

This is not literature. As a grown-up sequel to children’s trash,  All the Broken Places  serves two roles. First, to demonstrate that Boyne definitely did not think that the Germans were innocent, definitely knew they were “complicit” and “guilty” and that history is “complicated”, etc, thanks very much. Second, to serve as a sort of fan fiction for those peculiar adults who long for the comfort of a childhood favourite.

As to this first goal, at least, it is a consummate failure, a wildly simplified narrative that misrepresents the extent of Nazi ideology. As in  The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas , Boyne underestimates the family’s awareness of the Holocaust, lending his German characters an exaggerated naivety, or implausible deniability. To take one ridiculous example, how on Earth would a girl active in the Jungmädelbund (a girls’ section of the Hitler Youth), nursed on anti-Semitic propaganda, not notice that a guy named David Rotheram, who presumably speaks with a Yiddish accent, is Jewish? And while Boyne mechanically asserts that the past is “complicated”, he betrays no knowledge of those complications. He portrays Nazi officials as swiftly killed, omitting that hundreds of them held high-ranking positions in the post-war West German government. Simultaneously, he portrays their families as unscathed (save a head-shave), omitting that in the Russian zone – the only one tending to summary executions of Nazis – women were frequently raped by the occupiers. Boyne flaunts a teenager’s understanding of the causes and consequences of the Second World War: Germans were poor, then naughty, then poor again. Indeed, he at no point even alludes to any present-day legacy of Nazism: not the rise of the right-wing nationalist Alternative für Deutschland, not synagogue terrorism in Europe or America, not even, at any point, the mere concept of Holocaust denial. Instead, this sterile novel stays well confined within a London apartment building, unaware of and uninterested in the world outside.

As with so much Holocaust fiction  All the Broken Places  utterly fails in its stated purpose: making the next generation slightly less likely to participate in the next genocide. Achieving that goal would call for a radical revamping of Holocaust education, to focus on multiple genocides and on the horrifying fact that they were widely supported, and that the ideology that enabled them was believed even by – especially by – elites. In the case of the Holocaust, this ideology was Nazi racial pseudoscience: an elaborate thesis of eugenics supported by American funding (including from the Rockefellers) that also advocated the destruction of the disabled, Gypsies, political dissidents, homosexuals and others. Boyne’s reduction of Nazi ideology to a fringe belief, expressed in infrequent outbursts – “those filthy Jews” – is all the more absurd now that he’s writing for grown-ups. The issue, in short, is that judging by the last ten years of Western political life, humans are less able than ever to apply any sort of epistemic reflection to the news cycle, political discourse and scientific opportunism, and God forbid authors like Boyne be those charged with changing this.

In the self-serving afterword here Boyne essentially repeats that he writes about Nazis so as to humanise them, “exploring emotional truths and authentic human experiences”. Setting aside his total inability to render human experience as anything other than a Hallmark card, he’s fundamentally wrong: the purpose of Holocaust education should not be to recognise the good in bad people, but to recognise the bad inside  good  people.

We don’t need anyone to teach us how to recognise the barefaced devil; the danger is the insidious and gradual creep of violence into the civilised and everyday. This is what the philosopher Theodor Adorno’s dictum – “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” – warned of: art unable to recognise the break the Holocaust represented with the past, afraid to apprehend the failure of the civilising project. With this childish drivel in which the villains and victims come labelled and sorted, Boyne yet again seems immune to its lessons.

All the Broken Places By John Boyne Transworld, 384pp, £20

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This article appears in the 26 Oct 2022 issue of the New Statesman, State of Disorder

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Paperback – 2 August 2012

Discover an extraordinary tale of innocence, friendship and the horrors of war. 'Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone'

Nine-year-old Bruno has a lot of things on his mind. Who is the 'Fury'? Why did he make them leave their nice home in Berlin to go to 'Out-With' ? And who are all the sad people in striped pyjamas on the other side of the fence? The grown-ups won't explain so Bruno decides there is only one thing for it - he will have to explore this place alone. What he discovers is a new friend. A boy with the very same birthday. A boy in striped pyjamas. But why can't they ever play together?

‘A small wonder of a book’ Guardian BACKSTORY: Read an interview with the author JOHN BOYNE and learn all about the Second World War in Germany.

• Reading age 12 - 17 years
• Print length 256 pages
• Language English
• Publication date 2 August 2012
• ISBN-10 9780099572862
• ISBN-13 978-0099572862
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ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 253

Author has no regrets releasing sequel to controversial ‘Boy in the Striped Pajamas’

John boyne orients ‘all the broken places’ towards adults rather than children, while deflecting criticism for getting facts wrong and sympathizing with germans over jews.

JTA — At one point in John Boyne’s new novel “All The Broken Places,” a 91-year-old German woman recalls, for the first time, her encounter with a young Jewish boy in the Auschwitz death camp 80 years prior.

“I found him in the warehouse one day. Where they kept all the striped pajamas,” she says.

The woman, Gretel, quickly realizes her mistake: “this was a phrase peculiar to my brother and me.” She clarifies that she is referring to “the uniforms. … You know the ones I mean.”

Boyne’s readers are, in fact, likely to know what Gretel means, as “All The Broken Places” is a sequel to Boyne’s 2006 international bestseller “ The Boy in the Striped Pajamas .” At a time when other Holocaust books intended for young readers have been challenged or removed from some American schools, the enduring popularity of “Striped Pajamas” has conjured up love and loathing in equal measure for its depiction of Nazi and Jewish youths during the Holocaust. It has sold 11 million copies, appeared in 58 languages and in major motion picture form, and been the only assigned reading about Jews or the Holocaust for countless schoolchildren, mostly in Britain. Yet Holocaust scholars have warned against it, panning it as inaccurate and trafficking in dangerous stereotypes about Jewish weakness.

Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from his Dublin home on Tuesday, the day “All the Broken Places” hit US shelves, Boyne said he hoped readers would take his new book on its own terms — as a more sophisticated meditation on guilt, culpability and evil, for an adult audience rather than children this time. But he also wants to defend the original work that made him famous.

“I do feel it’s a positive contribution to the world and to Holocaust studies,” said Boyne, who estimates that he has personally spoken to between 500 and 600 schools about “Striped Pajamas.”

Not everyone agrees. A 2016 study published by the Centre for Holocaust Education, a British organization housed at University College London, found that 35% of British teachers used his book in their Holocaust lesson plans, and that 85% of students who had consumed any kind of media related to the Holocaust had either read the book or seen its movie adaptation.

That level of widespread familiarity with the book led many students to inaccurate conclusions about the Holocaust, such as that the Nazis were “victims too” and that most Germans were unaware of the horrors being visited upon the Jewish people, the study found.

As overall awareness of the Holocaust has decreased among young people especially, Boyne’s novel has become a casualty of its own success. Holocaust scholars in the United Kingdom and United States have decried the book, with historian David Cesarani calling it “a travesty of facts” and “a distortion of history,” and the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre in London publishing a long takedown of the book’s inaccuracies and “stereotypes.”

“With the rise in antisemitism, such as it is in this country, and that so often manifests through trivialization, distortion and denial of the Holocaust, this book could potentially do more harm than good,” Centre for Holocaust Education researcher Ruth-Anne Lenga concluded at the end of her 2016 study.

Boyne came to the Holocaust as subject matter purely on his own, having never been taught about the history growing up in Ireland. (He attended a Catholic school, where, as he has recounted publicly, he was physically and sexually abused by his teachers.) Reading Elie Wiesel’s “Night” as a teenager, Boyne said, “made me want to understand more.”

He would read many more Holocaust books during his 20s, from Primo Levi to Anne Frank to “Sophie’s Choice,” fascinated by the sheer recency of the atrocity. “How could something that seems like it should have happened, say, 1,000 years ago — because the death count is so enormous and so horrifying — how could that happen so close to the time that I’m alive in?” he thought. “And if it could, then what’s to stop it happening again?”

That fascination led to the publication, when Boyne was 33, of “Striped Pajamas,” which he’d always conceived of as a children’s story. In the book, Bruno, the 9-year-old son of a Nazi commandant, befriends Shmuel, a Jewish concentration-camp prisoner of the same age; it ends with Bruno donning the “striped pajamas” and following his friend into the gas chambers. Further driving home the fable conceit, an initial draft included a framing device of Boyne as a character reading the story to an audience of children, before an editor advised him to cut it.

During his writing process, Boyne said he was concerned with “the emotional truth of the novel” as opposed to holding to historical accuracy, and defended much of the book’s ahistorical details — such as moving the Auschwitz guards’ living quarters to outside the camp, and putting no armed guards or electric fences between Bruno and Shmuel — as creative license. A common critique of the book, that the climax encourages the reader to mourn the death of Bruno over that of Shmuel and the other Jews in the camps, makes no sense to Boyne: “I struggle to understand somebody who would reach the end of that book and only feel sympathy for Bruno. I think then if somebody does, I think that says more, frankly, about their antisemitism than anything else.”

He also justified his decisions by reasoning that a novel like his shouldn’t be the basis for Holocaust instruction.

“I don’t think that it’s my responsibility, as a novelist who didn’t write a school book, to justify its use in education when I never asked for that to happen,” he said. “If [teachers] make the choice to use a novel in their classrooms, it’s their responsibility to make sure the children know that there is a difference between what happens in this novel and what happened in real life.”

Boyne added that he was “appalled” by a recent JTA report about a Tennessee school district removing Art Spiegelman’s graphic Holocaust memoir “Maus” from its curriculum. If teachers are choosing between teaching the two books, he said, “‘Maus’ is better, no question about that. And a much more important book.” (Earlier this year, Spiegelman himself took a swipe at “Striped Pajamas” by telling a Tennessee audience that no schools should read Boyne’s novel because “that guy didn’t do any research whatsoever.”)

For the first decade of his book’s release, Boyne would frequently receive invites to speak at Jewish community centers and Holocaust museums. He met with survivors who shared their stories with him.

Over the years, more research has been published about the book’s popularity in the classroom, which has led to more scrutiny of its factual inaccuracies. Other authors, Holocaust researchers and some educators have come out forcefully against the book’s use in the classroom. At the same time, Boyne said, his invitations to Jewish venues dried up.

The author has also been known to exacerbate the issue by sparring with his critics, even when they are respected institutions. Most infamously, in 2020, Boyne got into a Twitter feud with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum , which said his Auschwitz-set book “should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches about the history of the Holocaust.”

The back-and-forth was provoked after Boyne criticized what he saw as the crassness of more recent Holocaust novels, such as “ The Tattooist of Auschwitz ” by Heather Morris. Reflecting on the spat, Boyne said of the Auschwitz memorial, “I hope that they do understand that, whether my book is a masterpiece or a travesty, that I came at it with the very best intentions.”

Boyne conceived of the sequel shortly after finishing “Striped Pajamas.” It follows Bruno’s older sister Gretel as she lives in hiding after the war and successfully conceals her Nazi upbringing all the way into the present day. A preteen during the Holocaust, Gretel becomes gradually more aware of its horrors after seeing newspaper articles and documentaries and encountering former Resistance members and Jewish descendants of survivors (including one, David, who becomes her lover without knowing her true background).

Unlike “Striped Pajamas,” “All the Broken Places” is intended for adults. It’s filled with sex, violence, suicide attempts and bad language — and also some of the details of the Holocaust that were omitted from the first book. It mentions the Sobibor death camp by name, for example, and also takes the time to correct Bruno’s childish assumptions about the death camps being a “farm.”

But it tells the story from the perspective of a German who was directly implicated in the Holocaust. Throughout, Gretel reflects on her complicity in the Nazi regime, and her self-interest in hiding from authorities in the following years rather than trying to bring people like her father to justice. Missing from the book is any serious discussion of antisemitism as an ideology, and to what extent Gretel ascribes to it — though there is plenty of hand-wringing over postwar anti-German sentiment. In one shocking moment, a former S.S. lieutenant in hiding presents Gretel with a pair of Hitler’s eyeglasses and urges her to try them on; she is terrified to discover that this excites her.

The book’s reception has been mixed. While praised by publications including Kirkus Reviews (“a complex, thoughtful character study”) and the Guardian (“a defense of literature’s need to shine a light on the darkest aspects of human nature”), the New Statesman took Boyne to task for writing an “immoral” and “shameless sequel” that further erodes the “Jewishness” of the Holocaust.

At the behest of his publisher, Boyne has included an author’s note with “All The Broken Places” alluding to criticisms of “Striped Pajamas.” “Writing about the Holocaust is a fraught business and any novelist approaching it takes on an enormous burden of responsibility,” he tells the reader. “The story of every person who died in the Holocaust is one that is worth telling. I believe that Gretel’s story is also worth telling.”

Still, “Striped Pajamas” has its Jewish defenders. One, the 24-year-old composer Noah Max, is behind a new opera adaptation of the book, to be titled “The Child in the Striped Pyjamas.” It will debut in London in January; a recent story by the U.K. Jewish Chronicle helped convince the film’s rights holder Miramax to waive a $1 million licensing fee for the project.

A great-grandson of Jews who fled Vienna when the Nazis arrived, Max told JTA he’d initially read the book “years before I was capable of absorbing testimony,” and that it inspired him to seek out actual survivor testimonies and to begin composing the opera at the age of 19. He compared its message to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s writings on moral relativism.

“Ultimately, the book motivated me to write an opera about the Shoah and integrate Holocaust education into my music,” Max said. “Any book capable of that is worthy of attention.”

Max’s passion for “Striped Pajamas” inspired at least one Holocaust group to change its mind about its educational merits. The Holocaust Educational Trust, a London-based group that advocates British educators on how to teach the Holocaust, had as recently as 2020 declared that “ we advise against using ” the book in the classroom.

But following what Max described as “richly fulfilling conversations” about “the story’s symbolic and artistic worth,” the trust fully endorsed the opera and, he said, has begun to rethink its view of the book. (The group did not respond to a JTA request for comment.)

Even with 16 years of hindsight and the chance to rethink his bestseller, Boyne said he wouldn’t change anything. Reflecting on his youthful audience, he said, “If they weren’t reading ‘Striped Pajamas,’ it’s more likely they would be reading something that has no relevance to this subject at all.”

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Mark Herman's "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" depends for its powerful impact on why, and when, it transfers the film's point of view. For almost all of the way, we see events through the eyes of a bright, plucky 8-year-old. Then we begin to look out through the eyes of his parents. Why and when that transfer takes place gathers all of the film's tightly wound tensions and savagely uncoils them. It is not what happens to the boy, which I will not tell you. It is -- all that happens. All of it, before and after.

Bruno ( Asa Butterfield ) is a boy growing up in a comfy household in Berlin, circa 1940. His dad ( David Thewlis ) goes off to the office every day. He's a Nazi official. Bruno doesn't think about that much, but he's impressed by his ground-level view of his father's stature. One day Bruno gets the unwelcome news that his dad has a new job, and they will all be moving to the country.

It'll be a farm, his parents reassure him. Lots of fun. Bruno doesn't want to leave his playmates and his much-loved home. His grandma ( Sheila Hancock ) doesn't approve of the move either. There seems to be a lot she doesn't approve of, but children are made uneasy by family tension and try to evade it.

There's a big house in the country, surrounded by high walls. It looks stark and modern to be a farmhouse. Army officials come and go. They fill rooms with smoke as they debate policy and procedures. Bruno can see the farm fields from his bedroom window. He asks his parents why the farmers are wearing striped pajamas. They give him one of those evasive answers that only drives a smart kid to find out for himself.

At the farm, behind barbed wire, he meets a boy about his age. They make friends. They visit as often as they can. The other boy doesn't understand what's going on any more than Bruno does. Their stories were told in a 2007 young adult's novel of the same name by John Boyne, which became a best seller. I learn the novel tells more about what the child thinks he hears and knows, but the film is implacable in showing where his curiosity leads him.

Other than what "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is about, it almost seems to be an orderly story of those British who always know how to speak and behave. Those British? Yes, the actors speak with crisp British accents, which I think is actually more effective than having them speaking with German accents, or in subtitles. It dramatizes the way the German professional class internalized Hitler's rule and treated it as business as usual. Charts, graphs, titles, positions, uniforms, promotions, performance evaluations.

How can ordinary professional people proceed in this orderly routine when their business is evil? Easier than we think, I believe. I still obsess about those few Enron executives who knew the entire company was a Ponzi scheme. I can't forget the Oregon railroader who had his pension stolen. The laughter of Enron soldiers who joked about killing grandmothers with their phony California "energy crisis." Whenever loyalty to the enterprise becomes more important than simple morality, you will find evil functioning smoothly.

There has not again been evil on the scale of 1939-1945. But there has been smaller-scale genocide. Mass murder. Wars generated by lies and propaganda. The Wall Street crash stripped people of their savings, their pensions, their homes, their jobs, their hopes of providing for their families. It happened because a bureaucracy and its status symbols became more important than what it was allegedly doing.

Have I left my subject? I don't think so. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is not only about Germany during the war, although the story it tells is heartbreaking in more than one way. It is about a value system that survives like a virus. Do I think the people responsible for our economic crisis were Nazis? Certainly not. But instead of collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in rewards for denying to themselves what they were doing, I wish they had been forced to flee to Paraguay in submarines.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

Rated PG-13 for some mature thematic material involving the Holocaust

Vera Farmiga as Mother

Jim Norton as Herr Liszt

David Thewlis as Father

Sheila Hancock as Grandma

Rupert Friend as Lt. Kotler

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Book Review: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Ashok Subramanian

Two thoughts clash in my mind when I write this review about John Boyne’s ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’. This is about how to treat a historic event in its reality versus children’s fiction around a prohibitive topic. It was a risk that John Boyne was taking and he chose to tiptoe on the reality bit and presents the story from a 9-year-old’s perspective.

The innocence of the perspective has to be first acknowledged, or else we will be discussing the veracity of the fable, which I would rather not. As a book reviewer, I follow the author than take an independent stand, not because I don’t deplore and condemn the gruesome events at the Auschwitz camp, but because there are enough revelations of the gruesomeness that filter through the innocent and naive perspective of a 9-year old boy.

The fact that Grandmother would turn in her grave if she realized that the Fury had sent his condolences on her death expresses the author’s position on the German regime of the times.

‘Fury’ and ‘Out-with’ are two instances when a 9-year-old boy struggles to get the names synonymous with the Holocaust — Fuhrer, and Auschwitz. I can surmise why John Boyne would have chosen to tiptoe because the story is a seeping narrative of childhood’s innocence that soaks slowly into horror toward the end.

The boy, Bruno is shocked to find that his things are being packed by his maid Maria under the strict instructions of Mother. Mother is nice but always draws the line when she means business. His house has certain out-of-bound areas, especially Father’s office. He is called only when Father wants to meet him there.

In intermittent flashbacks in intervening chapters, the author covers the incidents leading to the first scene of the story. This includes the backstory of the family. The pride of the menfolk is demonstrated by Grandfather, then Father about their Fatherland, their feeling of depravity and injustice after the Great War, fueled by the Fury, who installs Father as the commandant of the Out-With Camp and their uniform, neatly pressed on one side. Grandmother denounces the promotion and storms out of their house, never to be seen alive by Bruno again.

The visit of the Fury and the taller woman, Eva, for an unannounced dinner brings out the most undesirable change in his life. Bruno hates the haughty and misbehaved guest — the Fury but likes the gentler and considerate, Eva. Here we get a glimpse of Fury’s personality and the hatred he invokes in Bruno’s mind.

The interactions with Gretel and Lieutenant Kotler bring out the mind of the younger generation — young boys radicalized into Fury’s Order, and young girls, head over heels when meeting virile young soldiers, but indoctrinated with the same thoughts. ‘ We are Germans, and the ones in the camps are Jews, and we don’t like them, so they live in the camp. ’ Her banter with Bruno brings out her clear yet misguided understanding of German youth at that point. Finally, Gretel’s transformation is a subtle indication of this indoctrination — from rearranging dolls she spends most of her time reading newspapers and rearranging pins on maps, indicating her succumbing to the Fury’s Order.

The interactions with Pavel, who is a waiter, but in reality a Jewish doctor gives Bruno, an understanding of the value of timely considered action, at the same time he also begins to understand the situation Pavel is in. As Pavel weakens, his response to Father and Kotler during dinner is erratic, and he is treated abysmally by Kotler, as he drops and breaks a wine bottle.

The way Kotler treats Shmuel when he visits to clean the glasses, calling him a thief and threatening him with expletives and punishment opens Bruno’s mind ( and the readers’) to how Jews were treated in social scenarios.

The most important thread of the storyline runs from the first scene. Bruno loses his friends for life in Berlin, as he moves with his parents and sister Gretel to Out-with. He feels lonely in their new house, which is close to the Out-with camp, now run by Father. After trying to find ways to spend time at the house, including his interactions with his maid Maria and the Hopeless Case — Gretel, he finally ventures out. His curiosity is piqued by the scenery outside his window — a camp with houses where men in striped pajamas gather and wander about.

His exploration along the camp fence leads to him meeting a Jewish boy from Poland called Shmuel, who is born on the same date and year as Bruno. The conversations lead to understanding and friendship, and they continue to meet when it does not rain. Bruno brings food to Shmuel and hides their friendship from everybody else at his home.

Mother gets bored at Out-with and finally, Father agrees to send them back to Berlin. The friends meet and decide to say goodbye the next day. Bruno promises Shmuel that he will help trace his father by getting under the fence in striped pajamas. The next day, the boys meet and Bruno changes into the camp clothes. They venture into the camp, searching for evidence of Shmuel’s Papa.

What he sees is different from what he had imagined. He sees soldiers, dressed in full bright uniforms, smiling, mock-firing, poking, and abusing men with shaved heads and in striped pajamas. It is too much for him to take in.

Bruno’s instincts push him to leave the camp and join Mother who is packing to leave for Berlin. Meanwhile, the march that took Shmuel’s Papa away now sweeps the two friends in its deluge. They get shepherded into a chamber, which the boys believe to be a rain shelter. As the horror happens, Bruno reaffirms his friendship with Shmuel by holding his hands firmly.

The visuals drip with innocence and naive interpretations of Bruno and Shmuel, we dawn upon the horror that trails their innocence in the final chapter.

Bruno wants to be an explorer. His natural inquisitiveness takes him on a walk along the camp fence. This inquisitiveness manifests in his offer to search for Shmuel’s missing Papa, which in turn leads him across the fence and gets him into the gas chamber.

“The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you’ve found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard.” ― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

It might have been better off left alone, but he ends up dead along with a friend in the gas chamber. Without his exploration, we would not know what Shmuel and his family were going through along inside the camp. Through this exploration, Bruno ( and the reader) see what is there up, close and personal.

The scenes are led by the simple visuals that the boys see. Then the naive interpretations of the 9-year-olds follow. Finally, the horror trails their innocence. The boys live their lives in the moment, clearly and present, not knowing the horrific end they are going to suffer. I am not sure about the criticism of the ‘missing reality’ here, but the way the horror grew on me, between the last words of Bruno, and the last chapter, which explains the aftermath, is the most telling part of the narrative of what the boys went through in the gas chamber of Auschwitz camp.

The reader’s mind switches from the 9-year-old’s perspective to being themselves, just realizing the horrendous events and the aftermath. Even if it is historically inaccurate, the way the visuals grow in the reader’s mind and then explode from naivety to horror requires some level of shock absorption. So I would recommend this book for the discerning reader rather than a child.

~Ashok Subramanian © 2022

Written by Ashok Subramanian

A poetic mind. Imagines characters, plots. Loves Philosophy, Literature and Science. Poetry-Short Stories-Novels- Poetry Reviews-Book Reviews

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