Last week I finished one of the most intriguing presentations of the horrors of Nazi Germany that I have ever read, though it reads like a children’s book.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne even looks like a children’s book. It was published in 214 pages of relatively large print.
It is subtitled “A Fable,” and it is written in the tone of a child’s fairy tale. But this little novel is not for children. It packs a punch that adult readers won’t soon get over.
The story begins in Berlin, which is one of the few place names given in the book. No dates or real historical events are ever referred to.
The viewpoint character is 9-year-old Bruno, a German boy who lives in upscale Berlin neighborhood with his mother, his pesky 12-year-old sister Gretel, and his father, a Nazi officer of some kind who is supposedly destined for “great things.” The word “Nazi” is not used in the book, nor is World War II, nor is any other specific reference to historical fact.
The lack of detail in this story reflects Bruno’s lack of knowledge. We are in a child’s world in the Nazi capital at that point in World War II when the Germans are still reveling in the successes of their powerful army and the magnetism of their leader, Adolph Hitler.
Bruno is a sheltered child in a prominent family. His job is to do as he’s told, speak respectfully to guests, retire politely to his room when he’s dismissed and not question authority. He doesn’t know that there’s a war going on that’s encompassing the whole world. He’s more interested in playing with his best-friends-for-life, Karl, Daniel and Martin, and annoying his sister, all of which makes him a typical nine year old.
One night, “the Fury” and a beautiful blond woman come to dinner at Bruno’s house. A few days later, Bruno returns from school to find the maid packing up all his clothes and “secret stuff that is nobody’s business.” He learns that the family is moving to a new home in an unspecified place and not returning to Berlin “for the foreseeable future.”
After a long train trip, the family arrives at their destination, a house much smaller than their home in Berlin, without the bustling neighborhood Bruno had loved. The home is in the middle of nowhere, unfriendly soldiers are in and out of the house all day talking to his father, and Bruno has no one to play with. He is told that he is now living at “Out-With.” Bruno hates his new environment and doesn’t understand why he’s there.
Finally, trying to find a positive side to his situation, Bruno begins exploring. He has seen that his house is next to a large fenced field with many buildings in the distance. He can see people moving around. Perhaps he can make friends with someone on the other side of the fence!
As he walks along its perimeter one day, he comes upon a boy about his age, but much skinnier and gray in the face. The boy is wearing striped green pajamas with a cap on his bald head. The boys sit down on either side of the fence and begin a conversation that leads to friendship.
His new friend’s name is Schmuel, and he tells Bruno that they are at a camp in Poland, which Bruno won’t believe because he is German and has never heard of Poland, so this can’t be true.
He also can’t understand why Schmuel can’t come on his side of the fence to play, why if he’s hungry he doesn’t just go get something to eat, and why he often shows up bruised and grayer in the face than usual.
This is not a passive read. The literary technique Boyne uses is dramatic irony, a situation in which the reader knows things that the characters do not know— in this case Bruno’s naivete requires our own knowledge for interpretation. That’s how we’re pulled into the story.
When you put this little novel under your Reading Lamp, understanding the story will depend on your knowledge of World War II, the identity of the “Fuehrer,” (the “Fury”), the purpose of Auschwitz (“Out-With”) concentration camp, and the Nazi mission to eliminate all Jews.
When one day Bruno works up the courage to don a pair of stolen striped pajamas and scuttle under the fence to join Schmuel and see what his life is like on the other side, we have to supply the understanding of what will probably happen to the boys when they are caught in a roundup and marched toward a large building belching smoke out its chimneys.
One of the points of this fable, of course, is the Germans’ own apathy toward the Nazis’ cruelty and their apparent childish “lack of knowledge” of what was going on all around them, though they were adults with access to information on their nation’s activities.
This book was copyrighted in 2006, when there was less obvious anti-semitic sentiment, and it’s ironic that we’re reading it now as that sentiment has raised its ugly head again.
Perhaps the point of this fable in 2026, over 80 years from the Nazi-led Holocaust, is “Know, and act on what you know.”
