Learning Guide for the Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Subjects: History; World War ll; Holocaust; War;

Social-Emotional Learning: Family; Friendship;

Moral-Ethical Emphasis: Justice; Respect; Caring;

Age 14+; MPAA Rating: PG; Drama; 2008; 94 minutes; Color; Available from Amazon.Com.

Description: Bruno, an 8 year old whose father has been assigned to be commandant of a concentration camp in Germany during World War ll, establishes a friendship with Shmuel, a boy confined behind the barbed wire of the camp not far from the posh home in which Bruno and his family reside. Bruno initially believes the camp to be a farm and refers to the uniforms of the incarcerated Jews as "striped pajamas." Slowly and reluctantly he comes to know the truth. His attempt to make up for an earlier betrayal of his friend causes him to don the "pajamas" and sneak into the camp to help search for Shmuel's lost father.Herded with camp inmates into one of the gas chambers, the two boys die together as Bruno's father searches the camp for his lost son.

This film is based upon a work of historical fiction by Irish novelist John Boyne.

Benefits of the Movie: The innocence of childhood is a concept which dominates the film and supports a perspective on the holocaust that is important for a full understanding of the historical events in World War ll. The two eight year old boys serve as a symbol of the child savior in that their innocence causes the viewers to see the absurdity of judgments based upon blood line. Viewers are able to see that there were Germans who opposed the direction their country had taken. They can also gain insight into the thinking that arouses support for Hitler’s views in the minds of the young. The film serves as a supplement to the Anne Frank book and film.

Possible Problems: The film can be disturbing to those sensitive to the mistreatment of children and to the general mood of hatred of the Jews. The final scene leaves no hope or relief from the somber tone of the film other than the fact that the boys are holding hands as they die.

Parenting Points: Prepare your child for the hopelessness in the film. You may want to discuss with them the reasons they have chosen to see this particular perception of the holocaust or explain to them your reasons for wanting them to see this film. Children can accept the story and the tone of the film better when they have some acquaintance with the concepts and the sadness they will encounter.

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Vera Farmiga, David Thewlis;

Director: Mark Herman

Helpful Background: Holocaust studies are an important part of the education of American students, but, with the notable exception of Anne Frank, few of the curricular guides provide a glimpse into the events of World War ll through the eyes of children. Statistics indicate that there may have been as many as 1.5 million children killed in the camps. The death rate for Children was higher than that of adults; it is estimated that 6 to 11 percent of the population of Jewish children survived Hitler’s efforts to eliminate Jews from Europewhereas nearly 33 percent of the adult Jews survived. Historians note that Jewish children began to suffer from the Nazi ideology years before the camps were built. In 1933, for example, a law was passed that limited the number of Jewish children in public schools to 1.5 percent of the total of all children attending school. This figure included university students. Within five years legislation was passed that prohibited Jews from attending German school altogether and Jewish schools were closed entirely in l942 after which the deportation to concentration camps began.

Children suffered terribly from the isolation and hardship forced upon their families by various policies perpetrated by German legislators prior to the creation of the camps and the systemic killing of Jews of all ages. One effort to help children was the organization of rescue operations such as“Kindertransports," in which Jewish children were transferred to safe countries prior to 1939. The United Kingdom was alone among the countries willing to help fund the process of rescuing the endangered children. British citizens paid nearly 250 dollars per child to move children between the ages of 3 and 17 out of threatened area of Europe. Historians assert that without the highly organized and perilous assistance of the Quakers, many of these children would have forced to remain behind due to a Nazi edict that made it virtually impossible for Jews to use trams, trains and port facilities. Aside from the assistance of the Quakers, there were individuals who came forward to assist in the effort to save the threatened children. One British citizen of German-Jewish ancestry, Nicholas Winton, established a rescue effort for Czech children that managed to send several hundred endangered children to safety.About 20% of the estimated children who participated in the various rescue operations were eventually returned to their home countries and reunited with what remained of their families.

The United States began an operation to rescue endangered children often referred to "One Thousand Children.”The plan was in effect between l934 and 1945 but met with difficulty when the Wagner-Rogers Bill, which intended to admit 20,000 Jewish refugee children, failed to pass through Congress in 1939.

Children who remained in the Europe prior to formal declarations of war were persecuted and isolated from the rest of society. After the onset of war, ghettos and transit camps were established by the Nazi organization in every country Germany occupied and children began to suffer and die from malnutrition, disease and the exposure created by the intensely harsh conditions under which they were forced to live. Eventually the deportations to the camps led to the deaths of over a million children.

German children faced a different sort of deprivation, which is in no way comparable to the difficultiesfaced by their Jewish or Gypsy counterparts. The boys were required to join the Hitler Youth organization and subjected to the militaristic mentality that would feed them directly into the Nazi party. The propaganda machine worked tirelessly on these children to assure that any values or beliefs aside from that promulgated by the Nazi party did not persist in their young minds. Some reports indicate that boys as young as 12 years old participated in military units and fought directly against Allied forces. Girls, too, were expected to support Hitler’s war efforts. Girls between 10 and 18 years old were taught homemaking and nursing skills and were used to tend to German troops who were injured on the battlefield. In the film, The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas, the methods used by the German propaganda machine are clearly portrayed in the scenes involving Gretel, the 12 year old sister of the film’s protagonist, Bruno.

The film has been criticized for sanitizing the camp experience and distorting facts about the Nazi extermination of Jews during the Holocaust. One such criticism, for example, asserts that boys as young as Shmuel, who is portrayed behind the barbed wire enclosure of the camp in the film, would have been killed immediately upon arrival. Such criticism has been met with refutations drawn from camp records that show specific number of children as young as Shmuel housed in Auschwitz, the unspecified name of the camp used in the film. The matter is moot, however, when one considers that the intent of the film is not to provide an historical account of the Nazi treatment of Jewish children; its themes, as well as its artistic merit, are intended to come from the illumination of the experience of both Jewish and Aryan children in the period of World War II. Both boys die in the gas chamber, thus asserting the idea that youth itself is the target of the crimes and cruelties perpetrated by the Nazi system that dominated Europe at the time.

An excellent novel that is easily read by students as young as 12 and appreciated by adult readers as well, is The Book Thief, by Mark Zuzak, an Australian writer whose book tells the story of a German girl who serves as a witness, albeit an active one, of the crimes committed by the Nazi system. Death, personified as a compassionate and philosophical character in the book, narrates the story in the first person and serves to illuminate many of the ideas suggested in The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas.

The Child Savior Myth: The use of two eight year old children in this film alludes, however obliquely, to the concept that a child has the ability to set right what may be wrong in the thinking of adults. The boys in the film show the innocence that is found in a child savior and in this innocence point out to viewers how, though there may be a metaphorical barbed wire fence standing between one person and another, there is a way to reach through the wire and metaphorically play with the individual on the other side. The fence may represent the religious, racial, cultural or class barriers that separate people. The game of checkers may represent the play experience that draws people together. This theme, essential to the storyline in the film, can be found through the two children who represent an important solution to the myriad problems facing people all over the globe as much today as any time in human history.

For a printable essay that explains the child savior myth, click here.

Use of Film in the Classroom: This film can be useful for both Social Studies and English Language Arts classes. The following assignments are divided accordingly.

Social Studies: The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas is not intended to reflect historical accuracy but instead to illuminate the lives of children caught in the events of the European theatre of war from a psychological and sociological point of view. In this regard it subtly touches on the following:

  • The disregard for the plight of the Jews by common German people during the period subsequently known as The Holocaust;
  • The application of anti-Semitism on the educated and the young;
  • The denial process applied to the existence of the death camps;
  • The propaganda used in education of German children;
  • The existence and treatment of opposition points of view;
  • The callous and casual manner in which more efficient killing methods were developed;
  • The ironies involved in failure to adhere to well developed standards of ethics in warfare, such as in the treatment of children.

The discussion questions that follow will help illuminate each of the above areas of focus. Research assignments can be given to individuals or to groups of students that require research and resourcing to go into depth on each of the topics listed.

English Language Arts: The following discussion questions will equip students with information needed to address the essay and research questions that follow the questions:

1. In the opening scene of the film, boys are running happily through an upper class area of Berlin. They run past a group of refugees being herded into a truck carrying meager belongings. What irony can be found in this scene? Suggested response: The children fail to notice a terrible scene involving community members who are being forced from their homes. This shows how sheltered and oblivious the children, much like the adult persons who are in the street as this event is happening. The irony is that this event, and its many consequences, will doom all of the people seen in the film, including the happy boy who seems to be the leader of the group of playmates. The suggestion of microcosm is evident.

2. What ethical problem is overshadowed when Bruno's father tells him that "Life is more about duties than choices?" Suggested response: Answers will vary. Students should be able to note that choices are a made in part by ethical considerations and when they are not, there is no real element of choice being offered. Freedom is lost when choices are made only from the point of view of survival, whether economic or physical. Bruno's father is little more than a slave if he truly believes he has no choices in the decisions he makes. Some students may suggest that adherence to duty, for example to one's country in time of war, disallows all ethical considerations. However, even in warfare there are ethical considerations to be made by leaders as well as common soldiers.

3. When Bruno's father comes down the elegant staircase in his home, he is met by the classic Nazi salute. His mother sneers and asks him if he is still that little boy who loved dressing up. She asks him if uniforms still make him feel special. What is she suggesting here? Suggested response: Bruno's father has been promoted to commandant of a death camp and is being honored for the distinction. His mother is clearly opposed to the Hitler regime and seems to be saying that the participants are little boys who need attention.

4. When Bruno sees the people across a fence that he assumes marks the boundary of a farm, he questions his father and is told that the people there are not really people. They are different. Later Bruno hears the sentiment echoed by his tutor. What causes Bruno to see things differently? Suggested response: Bruno meets Pavel, the old man who works as a servant in his home and who is wearing the stripped pajamas under his servant's clothing. Pavel helps Bruno make a tire swing and when he is injured, fixes his knee. Bruno learns that Pavel was a doctor before prior to working as a servant. Later Bruno meets Shmuel and is happy to have a friend. He does not see these two individuals as "different." Thus the suggestion made is that knowing an individual can shift the attitude about a group that is being promulgated.

5. Gretel, Bruno's sister, is seen several times with her dolls and then one day Bruno finds the discarded dolls ominously piled into a dark corner of the cellar. What does this image tell the film's viewers about the changes the girl is experiencing? Suggested response: Gretel is losing her innocence. She has developed a crush on the German soldier, Karl, who guards her home and washes the cars. She wants to impress him. She accepts the anti-Semitic propaganda she reads with her tutor without question and fills the wall space of her room with Nazi posters. The image of the discarded dolls in the cellar creates a powerful symbol for her lost compassion.

6. Karl reveals information about his father's exodus from Germany. This information threatens Karl, despite of his clear loyalty to the Nazi party and reveals something about Karl's cruelty in his brutal attack on Pavel, the servant who spills wine at the dinner table. What is suggested in the characterization of Karl that can help explain some of the attitudes of young men in his position? Suggested response: Karl's father was a professor who stood in opposition to the Third Reich. This fact can, and is, used against Karl in his efforts to succeed in the military hierarchy. He takes his fears out on the old man and beats his brutally as the family continues the meal in the next room. Ironically, Karl is transferred to the front because of his failure to report his father's escape from Germany.

7. The beating of Pavel serves as a turning point for Bruno's mother who is increasingly opposed to her husband's work in the military. What solution is offered to help her cope with her disillusion and fear? Suggested response: Bruno's father decides to send his family members to live with an aunt in Berlin. He seems to think that being away from the situation will make her feel better. He seems unwilling to accept her beliefs, as he was unwilling to accept his mother's beliefs and chooses to offer a distraction rather than a solution to the problem.

8. What is revealed in the characters of both Bruno and Shmuel in the episode in which Karl finds the two boys together in the family home and questions their actions? Suggested response: Out of his fear of Karl, Bruno lies and thus betrays his friendship with Shmuel who has told the soldier the truth about where he got the food he is eating. Shmuel is beaten and sent back behind the barbed wire. When Bruno apologizes to Shmuel for his betrayal, he is forgiven. This shows both the fear in which Bruno is living and his growing awareness of his father's complicity in the misery suffered by the Pavel as well as Shmuel. It also shows the innocence of children in the ease with which they can forgive. It indicates the importance of loyalty in friendship, which can surpass betrayal.