The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Essay

Primo Levi said, “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions,” (Levi). The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, released in 2008, is set outside of Auschwitz in 1942. The movie tells the story of a young german boy, Bruno, who befriends Shmuel, a young boy in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Bruno’s dad is the Nazi commander in charge of Auschwitz. Bruno and Shmuel keep their friendship secret from the Nazi’s, and together they face the harsh realities of the Auschwitz concentration camp that neither one of them saw coming. The concentration camps, and the behaviors shown by the Nazi soldiers in The Boy in the Striped …show more content…
In the movie, they show a group of the prisoners working on building something (The Boy). Most prisoners worked on construction projects, farms, coal mines or factories (The Nazi). In the movie we hear a bell being rung and then Shmuel has to go, otherwise they might notice that he is gone (The Boy). They would have Appell, which was when the Nazi’s took roll of who was there and who wasn’t (The Nazi). When Bruno goes into the camp, the movie shows the living conditions in the camp, accurate to what the living conditions actually were in Auschwitz (The Boy). There was no privacy and no sanitation in the toilet facilities or housing. The men & women were separated, children typically stayed with their mothers (The Nazi). Shmuel stays with his father (The Boy). The prisoners were given minimal food in the camps. Many thousands died from starvation (The Nazi). In the movie, Shmuel is hungry and asked Bruno to bring him food, because is not getting enough food in the camp. Bruno brings him food and tells him he can eat the pastries in the house, which he gets in trouble for (The Boy). These living conditions, as terrible as they were, are accurately are shown in the