The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Does This Children’s Book Whitewash the Horrors of the Holocaust?

Is the children’s book, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, so historically inaccurate that it unwittingly whitewashes the horrors of the Holocaust?

What historical facts about life in Nazi Germany and its work camps does this book distort? Are these inaccuracies misleading?

What affect did the Nazi Hitler Youth Movement have on the youth growing up and attending school in Nazi Germany?

Why is so important not to whitewash the horrors of the Holocaust? Can or has elements of the Holocaust been repeated in differing forms after World War II?

YouTube video for this blog: https://youtu.be/wDYjpAbh17g

DISCUSSING THE SOURCE

Back in the day when it was first published in 2006, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which was a children’s book that attempted to explain the horrors of the Holocaust in a manner that would not upset the sensibilities of young children, was a runaway best seller.

This book was recommended by an associate, so I started reading it without any preconceived notions, desiring to bring out the best in the work. And I acknowledge that the author had virtuous intentions, that he legitimately felt that he was making the world a better place by publishing this book.

However, when writing historical fiction, the author has a minimal responsibility to be true to the history he is depicting. In this case, where a moral lesson is key to the story, the author must also be true to the moral lessons of history. IMHO, the author falls so short of this imperative that his book deeply distorts the memories and history of the Holocaust, unwittingly deprecating and downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust.

Whenever I quickly come to such conclusions I immediately question: Am I the only person who perceives this? Dr Wikipedia says NO: I am not alone in my condemnation. In fact, Dr Wikipedia declares that many advocates of the critical necessity to remember the Holocaust also condemn this book roundly as being a deep distortion of the horrors of the Holocaust. Indeed, surveys shows that the gullible children reading the book regard it as being historically accurate, which it is not. Many regard it instead as a fable, and many critics don’t even think it meets that very minimal threshold.[1]

The author says this in his introduction to the tenth anniversary edition:
“When I was writing my novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” “I started with a very simple image of two boys sitting on either side of the fence, talking to each other, and was immediately interested in the journey that would bring them there, the conversations they would have, and the necessary end that I felt their story would reach.”[2]

This basic plot is as deceptive as it is absurd. The underlying premise is bogus for both historical and moral ideological reasons. There is no version of reality where a young Jewish prisoner would befriend and converse with a young Nazi son of a work camp commandant at a backyard fence.

Some camp commandants did have their families, including small children, living next to the camp. But any parent, both Nazi and normal, would want to shield their children from the views of the camp, so there would likely be a high brick or masonry wall hiding the camp from their tranquil back yard.

In the work camps, people did not wander about. When their work detail work was over, which was rarely during daylight hours, they were confined to their barracks. Those who wandered about the yard would likely be shot by the guards in the guard towers. Plus, the fences were likely electrified. When you arrived at either the Nazi work or death camps, and later at Stalin’s Gulag work camps, men and women were separated.

Were children always separated from their parents? This likely differed from camp to camp. Viktor Frankl in his memories of Auschwitz does not mention if young boys were included in their barracks. But another Holocaust survivor, Elie Weisel, said what helped his will to live was the knowledge that his father was alive, which indicates they were in regular contact, if not living together in the same barracks.

Were the Jewish families separated in Schindler’s factory? Dr Wikipedia states that in reality, initially his workers walked to and from the Jewish ghetto to his factory every day. When the Polish Jewish ghettos were closed, his Jewish workers lived at a concentration work camp near his factory in constant fear for their lives. In the closing days of the war, he moved his munitions factory to the Czech Sudetenland, saving his workers from the gas chamber with generous bribes.

The movie suggests whole families were saved; this detail is unclear in Dr Wikipedia’s summary of the actual events, which means it was unlikely.[3] So, even Steven Spielberg’s movie, Schindler’s List, was probably itself a sanitized version of reality, the actual events were far more tragic.

The author said of the Boy in Striped Pajamas said he wanted to reflect on how “war affects and destroys the experience of childhood, which is supposed to be a happy and carefree period, and what it means for a child to be thrust into an adult situation far ahead of time.”[4]

Though this sounds virtuous, it is the reverse: it is unwittingly deceptive. Rather, a more worthy objective is to show how the Nazi culture that surrounded them corrupted the morals of all German citizens, adults as well as children. The problem is that sometimes the past is so brutal that the very young cannot handle it. The solution is not to whitewash the past, the solution is rather to present the truth to our youth when they are old enough to process it.

The wholly unrealistic plot continues: Over time, Bruno notices that his friend Schmuel is losing weight, so Bruno sneaks him food. One day Schmuel’s father goes missing, and Bruno decides to cross the fence to help look for him, donning a prisoner uniform supplied by Schmuel. Bruno disappears; the book suggests that he disappeared into a gas chamber. His clothes are found, and his parents experience a comeuppance, after they unsuccessfully search for him for months, finally deducing what he had done to further his demise. This breaks the morale of his father, who, apparently seeing the errors of his ways, meekly surrenders to Allied Troops.[5]

Although there are accounts of the rare concentration camp commandant who developed compassion for his inmates, feeding them as best as he can, even paying for medicines out of his personal funds, most were sadistic monsters whose morals were twisted by decades of twisted propaganda they embraced. In reality, the commandant father would have likely beat his boy until he bled when he realized he had a Jewish prisoner friend. Many of these monsters never repented, they were Nazis in their hearts until the day they died.

When I sped-read the beginning of this novel, I didn’t pick up on the fact that “Fury” referred to the Fuhrer, and that “Out-With” referred to Auschwitz. While I understand the rhetorical reasoning for this substitution, it has the effect of whitewashing evil so it appears ordinary.

DEEPER MORAL IDEOLOGICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

The historical inaccuracies in this book have other deeper philosophical and political implications. In our view of politics, it is simply how we get along with our neighbor, whether the Golden Rule is followed with regards to the neighbors we do not know, and the classes of our less fortunate neighbors, many of whom are not like us.

The family separation when the Jews were admitted to the camps was another intentional cruelty the Jews had to bear. The Nazis were not concerned about the psychological effect on the children separated from their families, since the Nazis viewed the Jews as just another form of “life undeserving of life.”

One rabbi quoted by Dr Wikipedia contended that there were no nine-year-old boys in the concentration camps, because everyone who could not work was immediately gassed.[6] This was not quite true, several pictures of the Jewish prisoners freed from Nazi work and extermination camps do include children, although they could have arrived at the camp shortly before the Russians freed it. Also, in Auschwitz, a small number of children were “saved” so the evil Dr Mengele could conduct horrific medical experiments on them, which often resulted in gruesome and painful deaths.[7] But there were survivors, surprisingly. But it is true that far fewer children than adults survived.

Dr Wikipedia also quotes Rabbi Blech, stating the opinion of a Holocaust survivor friend, that the book is “not just a lie and not just a fairytale, but a profanation.” Students who read it, he warns, may believe the camps “weren’t that bad” if a boy could conduct a clandestine friendship with a Jewish captive of the same age, unaware of “the constant presence of death.”[8]

FOR NAZI YOUTH, ANTI-SEMITISM WAS A VIRTUE

My deeper objection to this book is the thought that the young son of the commandant could be so naïve that he would not realize that making a friend of a Jewish boy would be seen as repugnant. The reality was that anti-Semitism was a core belief of the Nazi state, and this was an important virtue that the Nazi engrained in the lessons taught to impressionable youngsters both in the Nazi Youth clubs and in the public school system. Furthermore, children were taught that the Nazi virtues prohibited them from associating with Jews.

In short, the members of the Hitler Youth were taught that right is wrong, and that wrong is right, which echoes this verse from Isaiah:
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness!”[9]
“Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people,
and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them.”[10]

Uncompromising and unapologetic anti-Semitism was core to Nazi ideology since Hitler took over the party, and indoctrinating the youth into this ideology was a key part of Naziism, they founded the Hitler Youth as a bizarre reflection of the fledgling boy scout and girl scout movements. Soon after Hitler seized absolute power, membership in the Nazi Youth Movement was made mandatory, and membership reached eight million children in 1940, in the beginning of the war.

Dr Wikipedia has this to say, and we are retaining the hyperlinks in our blog and PowerPoint scripts to emphasize there are multiple sources for these assertions:
“The members of the Hitler Youth were viewed as ensuring the future of Nazi Germany and they were indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, including racism.^[38] The boys were indoctrinated with the myths of Aryan racial superiority and to view Jews and Slavs as subhumans.^[39]^[40]^[41] Members were taught to associate state-identified enemies such as Jews with Germany’s previous defeat in the First World War and societal decline.^[42] The Hitler Youth were used to break up church youth groups, spy on religious classes and Bible studies,^[43] and interfere with church attendance.”^[44]^[45] [11]

This history of the Hitler Youth suggests that even if Bruno, the son of the commandant of Auschwitz, would have been able to talk with a Jewish boy his age, that the propaganda and lies he was constantly exposed to would make it highly unlikely that he would want to strike up a friendship with a Jewish boy in striped pajamas.

MORE ACCURATE HOLOCAUST STORIES

The Auschwitz camps were actually only a few of over a thousand concentration camps. Most of them were work camps, some of the larger camps in Poland were large death camps. Many death camps, like Auschwitz, also had a much smaller work camp. The decisions on who would live and who would die were often based on a whim. Conditions varied widely among the work camps. French POWs were imprisoned in work camps for the whole war. The Catholic theologian Yves Congar, who was a leading theologian of the Second Vatican Council, was imprisoned in a work camp where he met fellow Christians, including Protestants, who had quietly resisted Nazi policies. This forced intermingling contributed to a more welcoming ecumenical attitude in the years leading up to the Second Vatican Council, and the horrors of the Holocaust also softened the position of the Catholic Church towards Jews.

Yves Congar – Meaning of Tradition, Blog 1
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/yves-congar-meaning-of-tradition-blog-1/
Yves Congar – Meaning of Tradition, Blog 2
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/yves-congar-meaning-of-tradition-blog-2/

https://youtu.be/f0gQ_Y9tROo

Yves Congar, True and False Reform, Part 1, Finding Common Ground
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/yves-congar-true-and-false-reform-part-1-finding-common-ground/
https://youtu.be/yYp7yFZqc3s

Yves Congar, True and False Reform, Part 2, True Reform by Returning to Tradition
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/yves-congar-true-and-false-reform-part-2-true-reform-by-returning-to-tradition/
https://youtu.be/1xqY0kN1eKk

Pope John XXIII Opening Address to Vatican II, and Yves Congar, True and False Reform, Conclusion
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/pope-john-xxiii-opening-address-to-vatican-ii-and-yves-congar-true-and-false-reform-conclusion/
https://youtu.be/ALZozpbSrM4

The psychologist Viktor Frankl wrote Man’s Search For Meaning, which has two sections, one on the psychology of how to survive the Nazi work camps, based on his experiences at Auschwitz, and another on how this influenced Logotherapy, which is a psychological system that encourages you to find meaning in your life through loving and helping your neighbor, either in a relationship or in a helping career. He believes that man’s search for meaning is the most important driver in a healthy interior life.

Why was Viktor Frankl chosen to go to the work camps of Auschwitz rather than the death camps? Perhaps because he was a doctor, making him useful in the camps.

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning, His Life in a Nazi Concentration Camp in WWII
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/viktor-frankl-mans-search-for-meaning-his-life-in-a-nazi-concentration-camp-in-wwii/
https://youtu.be/O-YtC9qGWPI

Viktor Frankl’s Logo-therapy, Man’s Search For Meaning in Life, Love, and Suffering
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/viktor-frankls-logo-therapy-mans-search-for-meaning/
https://youtu.be/1nTYlhDUJh8

We reflected on post-war interviews with Confessing Christians, who refused to permit the Nazi regime to corrupt their beliefs with false doctrines that included claiming that Jesus was not a Jew. Many of these interviews touched on why Christians were not able to loudly protest the persecution and elimination of the Jews. These interviews are also included in our longer video on how Christians survived under the Nazi regime.

How Did Confessing Christians Tolerate Hitler? Excerpts From Post-War Interviews
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/how-did-confessing-christians-tolerate-hitler-excerpts-from-post-war-interviews/
https://youtu.be/ALl4HhEhgyY

How the Catholic Church and the Confessing Church Survived Under Hitler’s Pagan Nazi Regime
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/christians-under-hitlers-german-nazi-regime/
https://youtu.be/QP9UR8fqfvs

Since Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism when she married Jared Kushner, and since the existence of modern Israel appears to make the popular rapture prophecies more plausible, many MAGA worshippers are not openly anti-Semitic, so we plan to concentrate on reflections of civil rights history. But eventually we plan to reflect on Elie Weisel’s remembering of the Holocaust experience in his Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, and Day.

WHITEWASHING THE PAST BLINDS US TO TODAY’S EVILS

Most people are not aware how the Jim Crow segregationist regime influenced the formation of the Nazi regime, both directly and indirectly. For example, after Hitler became the Fuhrer, or absolute dictator of Germany, the Nazi lawyers used the Jim Crow legal systems in the Deep South as precedent when drafting the anti-Semitic Nuremburg Race Laws which barred Jews from schools and many occupations.

How the Racist Jim Crow Laws Served as Precedent for the Nazi Nuremberg Race Laws
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/how-the-racist-jim-crow-laws-served-as-precedent-for-the-nazi-nuremberg-race-laws/
https://youtu.be/_td3jPGD5TI

In the American version of the Holocaust, over ten thousand blacks were lynched with no hope of due process or legal protection in the century between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights era of the Sixties. Both Jews under Hitler and blacks under Jim Crow were seen as sub-human. Just as children in the Hitler youth were taught that anti-Semitism was a virtue, so the children in the Deep South also were taught that segregation and even lynchings of blacks was a virtue. Sometimes lynchings were publicly scheduled on Sunday afternoons after church so more whites could attend. Photographs of lynchings document the children who witnessed these lynchings.

Ida B Wells, Journalist, Brave Woman, and Anti-Lynching Activist
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/ida-b-wells-journalist-brave-woman-and-anti-lynching-crusader/
https://youtu.be/sLDHs0AigvY

In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King directly compared the Nazi Holocaust to the century of lynchings in America, calling lynching the American Holocaust. We compare this letter to Hannah Arendt’s account of the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi bureaucrat who administered the Holocaust, the Final Solution condemning millions of Jews to death in the gas chambers.

Comparing MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail with Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil in Nazi Germany
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/comparing-martin-luther-kings-letter-from-the-birmingham-jail-with-hannah-arendts-the-banality-of-evil/
https://youtu.be/PqFAUEXbi8k

Hitler and the Nazis were also inspired by the Eugenics movement in the United States before World War II, which was centered in California. Not only did they adopt sterilization of the mentally retarded and incompetent as recommended by eugenicists, the Nazis also adopted an extreme version of the Eugenics belief that some races were superior, and other races inferior, using Eugenics to justify the Holocaust exterminations of life unworthy of life, including the disabled, retarded, and mentally ill patients, as well as Jews.

Eugenics and Scientific Racism in the Jim Crow Deep South and Nazi Germany
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/eugenics-and-scientific-racism-in-the-jim-crow-deep-south-and-in-nazi-germany/
https://youtu.be/y7xvGu3L6oA

This history makes the first-term Trump policy, which he continues, of separating children from the parents of illegal aliens simply as cruel punishment, so horrifying. Over thirteen HUNDRED immigrant children have not been reunited with their parents, largely due to the lack of records when they were initially separated from their parents six years ago.[12] As the Atlantic Magazine pointed out in a famous article in 2018, the cruelty is intentional, cruelty is the point.[13]

We published a popular series of reflections on how Christians lived and survived under the various fascist regimes before and during World War II. The source for our reflection on Vichy France changed how France viewed its uncomfortable Nazi collaborationist past, and the source for our reflection on Fascist Italy discussed the roles of the two World War II popes, Popes Pius XI and XII. Many of these reflections also discuss the Holocaust and the persecution of the Jews.

Mussolini’s Fascist Regime and the Catholic Church
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/mussolinis-fascist-regime-and-the-catholic-church/
https://youtu.be/LvNynEdZFuM

Spanish Civil War and the Catholic Church
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/spanish-civil-war-and-the-catholic-church/
https://youtu.be/ozEioe6yyY8

Vichy France Regime, Blog 1, Pro-Life, Pro-Catholic, and Fascist
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/vichy-france-regime-blog-1-pro-life-pro-catholic-and-fascist/
Vichy France, Blog 2, Collaborating with the Germans in the Early Years, 1940-1942
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/vichy-france-blog-2-collaborating-with-the-germans-in-the-early-years-1940-1942/
Vichy France, Blog 3, The Tide Turns, Resistance and Collaboration
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/vichy-france-blog-3-the-tide-turns-resistance-and-collaboration/
Vichy France, Blog 4, Christianity in Vichy France
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/vichy-france-blog-4-christianity-in-vichy-france/

Vichy France in WWII: Pro-Fascist, Pro-Catholic, Pro-Life, Anti-Semitic
https://youtu.be/yYpNrhpmsYw

We published an equally popular series of reflections on the history and policies of Pope Pius XII that was based on the documents in the Vatican archives recently opened to scholars by Pope Francis. David Kertzer is a Jewish historian who wrote the two books on the World War II popes that were a primary source for our reflections may have been a little too harsh on Pope Pius XII. We have another source on the contents of these newly opened archives written by Michael Hesemann and published by the Catholic Ignatius Press using these Vatican archives that we may reflect on in the future.

Pope Pius XXII: Back Channel Between Hitler and the Pope
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/world-war-ii-back-channel-between-hitler-and-pope-pius-xii/
https://youtu.be/6xdxvchkWyY

Pope Pius XII, Wartime Pope, Axis Powers March Across Europe
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/pope-pius-xii-wartime-pope-axis-powers-march-across-europe/
https://youtu.be/L1bkOQNrlzg

Pope Pius XII, Wartime Pope, Allied Powers Turn the Tide of War
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/pope-pius-xii-wartime-pope-allied-powers-turn-the-tide-of-war/
https://youtu.be/pjMa3JdjW48

Pope Pius XII, Wartime Pope, Could the Pope Have Done More To Save the Jews?
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/pope-pius-xii-wartime-pope-could-the-pope-have-done-more-to-save-the-jews/
https://youtu.be/ONnAcLLBNog

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas

[2] John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (New York: Ember, Random House, 2016, 2006), Introduction to Tenth Anniversary Edition.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler

[4] John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (New York: Ember, Random House, 2016, 2006), Introduction to Tenth Anniversary Edition.

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas