#the boy in the striped pyjamas
Text
For those interested, here's my essay on the inaccuracies within John Boyne's "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" and the damage the book/film do to Holocaust education. The essay is formatted as a hypothetical letter to a person who might have the ability to make positive change in response. All credit for this essay belongs to me, and I have included my bibliography at the bottom.
Dear Dr. Miguel Cardona,
It’s been 90 years since Adolf Hitler came to power and the Holocaust began. In that time, myths, fallacies, and outright denial of the genocide have spread past the fringes of societies and moved into the mainstream. Study after study finds that knowledge about the Holocaust is not only waning, but false beliefs are becoming more common (Schoen Consulting) (Alper). Much of the ignorance propagating these beliefs is beginning in schools, and, though introducing the subject at its most honest is not appropriate for young ages, beginning education early is critical to students with no connection being able to understand the historical event. Unfortunately, John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, one of the most common books used in early Holocaust education, has instead been found to create more fallacies about the subject about which it’s supposed to educate. As a result, Boyne’s book works against the teaching of this part of history. I ask you and The Department of Education to make a statement and discourage the use of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in early Holocaust education.
The inaccuracies in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas begin in the characters. As a 9-year-old German boy and son of a high-ranking Nazi official, Bruno might have been preparing to join the Hitler-Jugend, known also as Hitler Youth, though it’s more likely he already would have been a member. In addition, he would have been entrenched in academic propaganda where “The Jew [was] held up to the children of Germany as the target for this racial hatred and vindictiveness” (Kunzer, 146). The apparent case of Bruno not even knowing what a “Jew” is (Boyne, 95) adds to the falsehoods creating the character. Though this is an extreme example, inaccuracies like this aid in the common myth that Germans didn’t know the events occurring or the actions against Jewish people. In reality, propaganda against Jews was baked into every aspect of society and easily observable at the time, such as in Kunzer’s report. Germans knew that the Jewish people were being removed from society, and most supported it or were at least ambivalent. There would have been no friendship between Shmuel and Bruno, and certainly not one based off Bruno’s ignorance when history has made it clear he would have seen the Jews the way almost all Germans did: as the enemy.
It’s also highly unlikely that Shmuel, as a 9-year-old Jewish boy, would be alive in Auschwitz. Though no specific camp is specified, Bruno’s perspective has the characters solely referring to the location as the mispronunciation “Out-With”, such as on page 28, suggesting the camp being Auschwitz despite the setting descriptions being inaccurate to that location. Officially, records found about 23,000 young people were registered in the camp (Fate of children in Auschwitz), with about 500 under 15 being liberated by Soviet Soldiers and most having had only been in the extermination camp a few months (The fate of the children). Children in extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau were often only spared for one of two reasons. One, they were deemed able enough to be used for labor (which was used both for construction and production and as another method to kill the prisoners within the camp), or, two, they were used for the human experiments which took place within the camp (Children During the Holocaust). Even then, it’s likely Shmuel would have been sent to the gas chamber upon arrival. The lack of historical accuracy involved in Shmuel’s character creates the idea that there was any sort of childhood within Auschwitz. The children who were spared were not children, but numbers. The falsehoods take away the brutality of the Holocaust, padding it and making it gentle - not to make it acceptable to young readers, but instead to rewrite it.
I understand my allegations of the damage The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas can and has done to modern youth’s understanding of the Holocaust might seem like extrapolation, but multiple studies have found children believe fallacies which stem directly from this book or its film adaptation. The majority of studies on impact seem to be done in England, but their findings are concerning nonetheless considering the book and film’s widespread use in America. In one study, Dr. Michael Gray looked at 298 eighth grade-equivalent students in four English schools “who had not previously studied the Holocaust in history at secondary school level” (Gray, 114). 12.8% of students directly referenced The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas when talking about their previous knowledge about the Holocaust (114), with some students mentioning the film’s “great insight” (115) and others mentioning the fictionality while saying many events are still factual (116). This seemed to be a trend; the fictionality was acknowledged, but many aspects in the story were nevertheless upheld as truth (116-117). Even with the book's identification as "A Fable" (Boyne, 1) it was also found some pupils believed it was true (116, 117). From misconceptions about deportations (119) to having complete misunderstanding about the roles of Sonderkommando (120-121), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas seems to have wrought havoc on many students’ understanding of the Holocaust.
The most worrying impact of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is the Nazi sympathy it seems to induce. The finale of the book and film are likely the primary sources as the ending sees Bruno killed after mistakenly going into a gas chamber with Shmuel and several other prisoners. These final chapters, 19 and 20, focus not on the camp or the purposeful murder of Jewish people, but instead on the grief of Bruno’s family and their new victimhood as a byproduct of the system from which they benefitted. The entire focus is taken from the Jewish people forced into the gas chambers with the goal of extermination and instead shifted onto the Nazis, looking solely at their sadness – the camp is depicted victimless until a Nazi’s son is the victim. This perhaps is what creates results seen in studies like the University College London Centre for Holocaust Education’s study on students’ knowledge of the Holocaust (Foster) which included a section on the impacts of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The study noted students saying things such as “...it doesn’t matter who was the bigger victim, they were all still victim of Hitler’s control in some shape or form” and “Yes, it is too easy to feel sorry for the Jews in the film” (Foster, et al., 93) which were directly fuelled by the book or film. To place Jewish people and Nazis as equal victims of the Holocaust is to distort the history. The intentionality of targeting the Jewish people (and others, such as Romani people) needs to be understood to teach students to recognise the scapegoating and dehumanisation that can precede similar disasters. Despite the subject matter, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas causes students to disengage entirely with the Jewish people impacted and instead turn their sympathy towards the Nazis, erasing the victims from their own genocide.
John Boyne is not unaware of the criticism of his book which has come from sources like Maus author Art Spiegelman (Lapin) and the Auschwitz Museum and Memorial (Auschwitz Memorial). In response to this criticism, Boyne told The Guardian, “...my novel, which, of course, was a work of fiction... therefore by its nature cannot contain inaccuracies, only anachronisms, and I don’t think there are any of those in there” (Flood). I have already pointed out numerous inaccuracies within the work. In addition, the allegation that historical fiction is somehow immune to inaccuracy is so flagrantly false that I struggle to understand how one could even make that statement. Though I could go into the myriad of ways historical fiction can absolutely be inaccurate, Dr. Michael Gray articulated it better when he said “...any author or film maker who chooses to use the Holocaust as their context, especially one who sets the film around a commandant and Auschwitz, is, whether they recognise it or not, producing a Holocaust story” (Gray, 125). It doesn’t matter what Boyne believes or how he views the falsehoods in his book when historians, impact studies, and a myriad of other sources prove the book incorrect as well as harmful. An author, even of historical fiction, cannot negate the facts - especially when their chosen setting has come to define a genocide.
Dr. Cardona, John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas contains inaccuracies which actively work against the education it claims to bolster. Discouraging the use of this book in Holocaust education in favor of options like Susan Goldman Rubin’s The Cat with the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezinor Anne Frank’s well known The Diary of a Young Girl is to eliminate a creator of many of the Holocaust myths which historians and Jewish groups work to combat. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
J
Bibliography
Alper, Becka A., et al. “What Americans Know About The Holocaust.” Pew Research Center, Jan 2020. Accessed 29 Oct 2023.
“Auschwitz-Birkenau.” My Jewish Learning, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/auschwitz-birkenau/. Accessed 15 Oct 2023.
Auschwitz Memorial [@AuschwitzMuseum]. “We understand those concerns, and we already addressed the inaccuracies in some books published. However, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches about the history of the Holocaust.” X, 5 Jan 2020, https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1213807345932931072. Accessed 3 Oct 2023.
Boyne, John. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Black Swan Edition, David Fickling Books, 2007. https://archive.org/details/the-boy-in-the-striped-pijamas/mode/1up. Accessed 22 Oct 2023.
“Children During the Holocaust.” My Jewish Learning, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/children-during-the-holocaust/. Accessed 15 Oct 2023.
“The fate of the children.” Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/fate-of-children/the-fate-of-the-children/. Accessed 15 Oct 2023.
“Fate of children in Auschwitz.” Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, https://www.auschwitz.org/en/fate-of-children-in-auschwitz/. Accessed 15 Oct 2023.
Flood, Allison. “The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas author defends work from criticism by Auschwitz memorial.” The Guardian, 7 Jan 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/07/john-boyne-defends-work-from-criticism-by-auschwitz-memorial. Accessed 22 Oct 2023.
Foster, Stuart, et al. “What do students know and understand about the Holocaust? Evidence from English secondary schools”. University College London Centre for Holocaust Education, 2016, https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1475816/14/Foster_What-do-students-know-and-understand-about-the-Holocaust-2nd-Ed.pdf. Accessed 29 Oct 2023.
Gray, Michael. “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: A Blessing or Curse for Holocaust Education?”. A Journal of Culture and History, vol. 20, no. 3, 2014, pg. 109-136, https://gcedclearinghouse.org/sites/default/files/resources/The%20boy%20in%20the%20striped%20pyjamas.PDF. Accessed 22 Oct 2023.
Kunzer, Edward J. “‘Education’ Under Hitler.” The Journal of Educational Sociology, vol. 13, no. 3, 1939, pp. 140-147. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2262306. Accessed 15 Oct 2023.
Lapin, Andrew. “Art Spiegleman, speaking to Tennesseeans, says ‘Maus’ controversy is ‘about controlling’.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 7 Feb 2022, https://www.jta.org/2022/02/07/united-states/art-spiegelman-speaking-to-tennesseeans-says-maus-controversy-is-about-controlling. Accessed 3 Oct 2023.
Schoen Consulting. “Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Study.” Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, 2018, https://www.claimscon.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/04/Holocaust-Knowledge-Awareness-Study_Executive-Summary-2018.pdf. Accessed 29 Oct 2023.
27 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
2008
#The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas#asa butterfield#jack scanlon#vera farmiga#david thewlis#amber beattie#rupert friend
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
1/5 stars
This is a book that wasn't created to bring awareness to the Holocaust. It causes sympathy from the readers towards the Nazis as we tend to feel how ignorant the child was in terms of the situation. This was likely not the case in real life, as they were required to be aware. This tends to lead to misinformation as well as a lot of other details that are inaccurate. The authors themselves tend to ignore what the Jewish community actually has to say. It's rather concerning how schools will use this to educate people about the Holocaust.
#the boy in the striped pyjamas#book review#bookaholic#bookshelf#bad books#antisemitic#the boy in the striped pajamas#john boyne#misinformation#genocide#propaganda
36 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hello people, yesterday was 1) my birthday, but also 2) Holocaust Memorial Day. A few days ago I have shared my short list of recommended reading on the topic (HERE) and strongly advised against reading “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” and “The Tattooist of Auschwitz”. Somebody asked why.
HERE is a really good article about why The Tattooist of Auschwitz is not worth attention. HERE is one about The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
In short, I would say these books do not explain the Holocaust or portray its victims and perpetrators in true light, rather they exploit the suffering for their own manipulative ends.
If the Auschwitz Memorial tells you these are harmful books, what more proof do you need?
#naturally both authors still think they were right#booklr#The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas#The Tattooist of Auschwitz
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
it is 2021. you are reading The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas in english class. you get to chapter 15. many of the students in your class are calling Lieutenant Kotler a ‘chad’ and saying that ‘he likes milfs’. the teacher is visibly disappointed.
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
#vera farmiga#actress#scream queen#glam up#the conjuring series#the orphan#hawkeye show#the boy in the striped pyjamas#bates motel
18 notes
·
View notes
Text
june 2022 movie reviews
i watch two movies (one live-action & one animated) a week every month:
letterboxd account ★ two movies a week every month list
here are the eight movies i watched for the month of june:
**SPOILERS BELOW**
JUNE 6 - WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS
i liiiiked this. it has big 300k fanfiction energy and i’m sure there are a lot of AUs based on this specific movie. SUPER cute and hilarious! i love that they ended up falling in love with each other (which happens in most pretend relationships in media) bcs they kinda seriously did deserve each other?? somehow? through all their fights and trying to get away from each other, there was one thing that was constant: unresolved sexual tension. lol. it’s always there to bite pretend relationships in the butt
letterboxd rating: 4.5/5
JUNE 7 - OCEAN WAVES
hmmm. i usually love studio ghibli but this was a miss for me. normally i would go well out of my way to try and justify fmc decisions, but rikako was so. FRUSTRATING. idk what gravitational pull she had on the people around her bc she was so awful to the people who wanted to help her. idk. she was so manipulative to taku the whole movie. not my taste.
in conclusion taku has awful taste in women. i know there’s a sequel to the novel this movie was based on idk anything about it but i’m hoping that they don’t end up together.
letterboxd rating: 3.5/5
JUNE 13 - THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS
idk what to say. i’m not in any place to speak on the issues presented in this movie. what the nazis did were horrible and hateful. but this movie...this movie didn’t exactly show it very much. it was hidden from us for most of the movie - as we have bruno, our protagonist, innocent and naive to the faults of his family - so when the time came for bruno and shmuel to go inside the camp and into the gas chamber i was horrified. the way they held hands and accepted their fate....
but. i’ve read reviews that say that this movie was historically inaccurate and downplays the horrors jewish people went through during the holocaust. i’m disappointed that the movie doesn’t speak more on this. i want to educate myself more on this topic before i can speak any more about this, especially since this is a movie set in an actual historical event. one day i will rewatch this but for now i will leave it at this.
letterboxd rating: 3.5/5
JUNE 14 - CASTLE IN THE SKY
admittedly this is a rewatch since i was so disappointed in ocean waves. i thought why not watch a ghibli movie you know is good? so...castle in the sky. i actually watched this for the first time in 2017 when i visited the artscience museum in singapore. it was amazing then and it is amazing now!
i love castle in the sky. i can’t find anything bad about it (except the way those grown men were looking at sheeta 😐) it’s a movie i could rewatch over and over again and never get tired of. i love the trust between pazu and sheeta even though they’d only just met. this is a heartwarming movie that makes me smile every time i watch it.
letterboxd rating: 5/5
JUNE 20 - EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
THIS. is the best movie of 2022.
this honestly kinda changed my life. everything everywhere all at once is divided into three parts: everything, everywhere, and all at once. well, pretty obvious. this movie was perfectly comedic, perfectly heartwrenching, and had perfect fight scenes. in short: IT’S A PERFECT MOVIE. nothing can top this in my book honestly. the visuals were amazing, as was the sound design, the script was fantastic as well. it’s honestly kind of mind blowing that we get to watch movies of this quality in 2022. i was bawling by the end. every loose end was tied up into a perfect little knot.
one thing though: when i watched it, the only thought in my mind was “man, i wish i could’ve watched this in a cinema,” since everything everywhere didn’t exactly have a cinema release in my country when i watched it.
BUT.
i was checking the cinema schedules for my local movie theatres (for rise of gru 😔) and EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE WAS GOING TO START PLAYING IN MY LOCAL THEATRE STARTING JUNE 29. it was a total shock to me since i had no idea it was going to start playing anywhere near me. obviously i got tickets as soon as i could (for june 30 so technically it was the last movie i watched in june) and let me tell you rn IT’S EVEN BETTER IN THE CINEMA. i had goosebumps the whole time.
if i could give this movie a 10/5 stars on letterboxd i would. WATCH IT.
(btw stephanie hsu from bmc is in it so if that isn’t more of a reason to watch it idk what is.)
letterboxd rating: 5/5
JUNE 21 - EARWIG AND THE WITCH
i watched this on netflix which was probably a mistake since the only language option there was english dub. a lot of ppl think this movie is bad but honestly i really enjoyed it lol. i love how she got everything she wanted in the end. she’s manipulative but in a cute way (does such a thing exist?) so TAKE NOTES rikako. once again studio ghibli does no wrong (except u ocean waves)
it ended in kind of a weird spot though. i wish we had a bit more especially since her mom finally made an appearance. i love the relationship between earwig and the mandrake and i also love how bella yaga warmed up to earwig by the end. cute!
letterboxd rating: 4/5
JUNE 27 - SOMEONE GREAT
i watched this with cy (hi cy) and even before this movie ended i was already making a spotify playlist about it. the first song? dbatc. the last song? clean. did you know dbatc was actually based on this movie? ALSO did you know that this movie was based on 1989???? ISN’T THAT SO FITTING??? i love that so much. i love /this movie/ so much. although i feel like it had even more sex scenes than fleabag which was 18+ and this was only 16+
it was kinda cringey sometimes and you could clearly tell it was made for and by millenials, but the break up aspect of it was done so well that i just didn’t mind. it was heartbreaking, and soul crushing, and everything a breakup can be. i can’t wait to watch this movie when i’m going through a break up lol it would be cathartic
also: the monologue. wow.
letterboxd rating: 4.5/5
JUNE 28 - PETS UNITED
trash. it was so awkward. i do commend it for that plot twist though, i thought that the mayor turned evil after losing roger, but to have a robot impersonating him this whole time? i had no idea
i feel like if it had better animation, better voice actors, and MORE BACKGROUND MUSIC, it would be around a 4. it was so weird. not to mention the casual racism and the horrible accents. WHY DID THEY GIVE RONALDO A SIX-PACK BTW???
also bob reminded me of james corden so -.5 for that.
letterboxd rating: 3/5
♡
#monthly movie reviews#what happens in vegas#ocean waves#the boy in the striped pyjamas#castle in the sky#everything everywhere all at once#earwig and the witch#someone great#pets united
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
Everyone needs to watch this movie
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
3 notes
·
View notes
Note
the boy in the striped pajamas
I'll look into it ty!
4 notes
·
View notes
Photo
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008)
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
#kitap#books & libraries#kitap alıntısı#kitapsözleri#kitap alıntıları#john boyne#the boy in the striped pyjamas
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
| From The Boy In the Striped Pajamas |
Another tragedy film with bad ending ;( Story is based on nationalsozialismus. In this movie, we can see that there is the oppression of Nationalsozialismus to Jew. There is one important thing that grown-ups should know from watching this.
It’s “Cultivating”.
Nationalism is an instillation from generation to generation about what happened in good things and bad things in that country. Cultivating good things to next generations is always good if it’s not a liar. Cultivating bad things gives you nothing but hate.
Hatred that caused by older generations but younger people have to take the hate, and as the time passes, the older generations have lost and gone, it turned out that remaining younger people will keep hating the opposition and know nothing of forgive or mercy until they realized and let it go and people who are hated have suffered from what they haven’t done or even didn’t know anything.
“Let it end in Our generation”
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
فيلم The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 2008 مترجم HD اون لاين
View On WordPress
#2008#Boy#Pyjamas#Striped#The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas#The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 2008#The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 2008 كامل#The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 2008 مترجم#اون#فيلم#فيلم The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 2008#فيلم The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 2008 مترجم#لاين#مترجم
0 notes
Text
you know that feeling when you read a book and it steals half of your soul and you feel like you’ll never read anything as good ever again, when it leaves you with a physical loss, when you literally hold onto it because you don’t want it to end?
hahahaha yeah.
#arc of a scythe#the song of achilles#books#oh my ghvcrgcvhjk#this is the good shit#when it does this and it hits EXACTLY right?#so good#the hunger games#boy in the striped pyjamas#bookblr#is that a tag?#anyway I’m losing my fucking mind over here#the book thief#sixpence speaks#maurice#new addition to this post:#the transgender issue: an argument for justice#it's non fiction but written so so beautifully i cried
371 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
