The boy in the striped pajamas

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Striped prisoner clothing from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (original title: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ) is a novel by Irish writer John Boyne in 2006. He received worldwide high critical acclaim, was among them the Irish Book Awards honored and meant for the author to literary Breakthrough. In Germany, the book stayed on the Spiegel bestseller list for months . It is about a nine-year-old boy whose father worked as a concentration camp commandant during World War II . He is too young to understand the tragedy of the place, and innocently befriends a Jewish boy in “ striped pajamas ”. The book was made into a film in 2008 .

action

Bruno is a nine-year-old boy who grew up in the Third Reich as the son of an SS officer. One day his father is ordered from Berlin to “Aus-Wisch” (in the English original “Out-With”, in reality the Auschwitz concentration camp ) and is supposed to supervise the extermination of the Jews there . Bruno is bored in this desolate place and sees many people in striped pajamas on the other side of the fences that run directly behind the garden of the house. He befriends a boy named Shmuel, who lives behind the fence, and meets with him every afternoon at the fence.

One day Bruno's mother decides to return to Berlin with her children. At the same time, Shmuel said that he could no longer find his father. On Bruno's last day in Auschwitz, Shmuel gets Bruno a striped pajama, and after he swapped his own for the prisoner's clothes, Bruno crawls under the fence to help Shmuel find his father. Scared off by the conditions in the camp, he soon wants to return to the other side of the fence, but suddenly Bruno and Shmuel and other camp inmates are sent by soldiers through the rain into warehouses that turn out to be gas chambers . For Bruno, Shmuel and the other Jews it is death.

A few hours later, Bruno's clothes left behind on the camp fence are found, but his father cannot explain what might have happened to Bruno. His mother and sister Gretel stayed in Auschwitz for a few more months in the hope of finding out something about Bruno's whereabouts, but eventually returned to Berlin without knowing his fate. His father stays there for a whole year until one day he realizes that Bruno was gassed in his own camp. The novel ends with Bruno's father being taken away by other soldiers.

characters

  • Bruno, the nine-year-old protagonist
  • Gretel, his twelve year old sister
  • Ralf, father of Bruno and Gretel and camp commandant of the concentration camp
  • Elsa, mother of Bruno and Gretel
  • the grandparents, Matthias and Nathalie
  • Kurt Kotler, SS officer in the concentration camp
  • Mr Liszt, Bruno and Gretel's private teacher in the new house near the concentration camp
  • Maria, the family maid
  • the "Furor" and Eva
  • Pavel, Jewish concentration camp inmate and family waiter
  • Shmuel, nine-year-old Jewish concentration camp inmate
  • Martin, Karl, Daniel (friends of Bruno)
  • Hilda, Isobel and Louise (friends of Gretel)

background

John Boyne revealed in an interview that he wrote the first draft of the book in a full two and a half days and barely slept until he finished the book. This is very atypical for him, because otherwise he would plan his works very long in advance. When he gave the book to his agent, he commented, “This is a book that is not like my other books. I think it's a children's book, but I think adults might like it too. "

Boyne sums up the book as a reminder. The message is, “When you start reading this book, sooner or later you will come to a fence. Fences like this exist everywhere. We hope you never encounter such a fence . "( If you start to read this book, sooner or later you will arrive at a fence. Fences like this exist all over the world. We hope you never have to encounter such a fence ).

criticism

The book was generally received enthusiastically. It has been translated into 46 languages, and the Guardian called it a “Holocaust Book for Children” and a “Little Miracle” because the book succeeds in depicting the horrors of Auschwitz without denying Bruno's childlike innocence.

The Rabbi Benjamin Blech called the book - and as a result the film - "neither a real lie still as a fairy tale, but as a profanation ." There were no nine-year-old children in Auschwitz - the Nazis immediately gassed all people who were unable to work. He conceded that a fable did not necessarily have to be factual, but the novel trivialized the conditions inside and outside the camp and promoted the myth that those who were not directly involved in the process did not know about it. He warned that students reading the book might get the impression that the camps were "not so bad" if a boy was able to have a secret friendship with a Jewish prisoner of his own age without realizing the constant presence of death .

Awards

expenditure

Secondary literature / didactic material

  • Sascha Feuchert, Jeanne Flaum: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. Reading key with table of contents, interpretation, examination questions with solutions, learning glossary. (Reclam reading key XL). Reclam, Ditzingen 2018.
  • Heike Schmid: Accompanying material "The boy in the striped pajamas". Hare and Igel, Munich 2016.

filming

The film version of the same name was released in cinemas in Germany on May 7, 2009 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Educating Bruno
  2. ^ Benjamin Blech: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Aish.com, October 23, 2008, accessed August 28, 2018 .