Retell, Reflect, Relate

Retell

The Boy in the Striped Pajama's

The Boy in the Striped Pajama's is the story of a young boy named Bruno, currently living in Nazi Germany. With his father being a SS Commandant for the Germans, he has been raised to have a mindset that all Jews are bad and must never associated with them. After his father has been promoted, Bruno and his family must move from the city to a house in the country. Bruno hates his new home because there is nobody for him to play with. After mentioning to his parents that he sees people working on what he thinks is a farm, but is actually a concentration camp, he is forbidden from going in the backyard garden. One day Bruno is extremely bored, and against his parents rules decides to explore beyond the backyard, while exploring he discovers the concentration camp for himself. He meets a boy who is the same age as him named Shmule, They become instant friends and talk about their upbringing so far. It is very clear that they have lived two very different lives being a Jew and a German. Bruno visits Shmule daily talking about each other and bringing him games such as chess. After an altercation between a soldier and a Jewish slave, Bruno's parents do not want to corrupt his childhood and decide to move back to the city. Bruno is sad to leave his friend, but remembers he has to keep a promise that he made to Shmule, which was to help him find his father. Bruno then digs a hole under the electric fence separating Bruno and Shmule and gets inside the concentration camp, Shmule brings him a set of their uniform so he doesn't stand out. The two friends then get caught in a group of men while searching for his dad, they then make it into a room with all the other men. Little do they know it is a gas chamber, the two are then killed.

Reflect

This movie was a great representation of how life was for Jews and Germans during the Holocaust and during Hitlers reign in general. It also shows how we put a name on things, for example if Bruno would have known in the beginning that Shmule was a Jew, i'm sure he would not have associated with him. They became very good friends before Bruno learned that Shmule was a Jew, and Bruno saw that not all Jews were bad.

Relate

I can relate this to discrimination. There was never a valid or legitimate reason for putting Jews through this horror. It was done because of the fact that one man, had beliefs that Jews were to blame for losing the first world war. The fact that Hitler had an antisemitic upbringing didn't help either. I can relate this to just after 9/11. After 9/11 many Muslim's was hated, whether they were Canadian or American. This was because of discrimination, a group of Muslims devastated America, and for it majority of Muslims were deprived some of the freedoms that they once had.