The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

I recently re-watched “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” this week. As one of my all-time favorite books, I love being able to watch the film and I think the directors did a great job. There is so much juxtaposition used in this story to display the innocent of childhood. For example, in the opening scene, there is an extreme close up on a Nazi flag. As the camera zooms out, we see young kids playing underneath the flag, carefree. The young boy’s father is a commander of Auschwitz, one of the concentration camps. After a party to celebrate this promotion, the film cuts to a scene of the boy and his friends enjoying playing a game of war. Throughout the movie, the young boy calls the camp “Out-With.”  Even though he plays “war,” the child are so ignorant about what is really going on. I personally think the most heart wrenching scene is when Bruno meets his young Jewish friend on the other side of the fence of Auschwitz. Bruno calls people in the camp “farmers, wearing pajamas” because of their uniforms. While the two look different, and barbed wire divides them, both kids just want a friend. Children don’t see the differences between people like adults do. They just want to have a fun childhood. As Bruno and his family drives away and left his old home to his house near Auschwitz, he symbolically left his childhood behind.