Mark Herman’s 2008 film, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, based on John Boyne’s novel of the same name, is an insightful and harrowingly beautiful examination of one of history’s most horrific tragedies: The Holocaust. The film’s poignancy is felt throughout, for example: while it is well known that the Nazis killed millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and political prisoners, did you know that it was also very sad? 
The film centers around Bruno, an eight-year-old German boy growing up in Berlin during the early 1940’s. Removed from his friends following his Nazi father’s appointment as commandant of an extermination camp and the family’s subsequent move to Poland to be closer to the action, Bruno’s youthful curiosity leads him to explore the area behind the family’s compound. He ultimately makes his way over to the concentration camp, which he believes is a farm, where he befriends Shmuel, the titular boy in the striped pajamas imprisoned within the camp’s electrified walls.
Through Bruno and Shmuel’s friendship, a plethora of thought-provoking revelations about the Holocaust are revealed, including:
- The “striped pajamas” that Shmuel wears are in fact not pajamas at all, but a prison-issued uniform that all inmates were forced to wear, even if they weren’t sleeping.
- Inmates in concentration camps were frequently very hungry, as they had limited or no access to restaurants or cafes.
- German soldiers were frequently curt and at times even downright violent in their interactions with Jewish people.
While unflinching in its depiction of the horrors of the Holocaust, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas does at least offer viewers some degree of catharsis, as Bruno is ultimately killed in a gas chamber, scoring a rare win for the film’s otherwise thoroughly oppressed Jewish population.
