“. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.”
Well, isn’t that how it has always been… the need to comprehend and address through our own perception, the ways of the world?
Irish novelist, John Boyne, has for readers enkindled the brutalities encompassed on six million European Jews by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime through a simple novel brimming with innocence.
In the days of yore, when the Holocaust saw brutal murders of innocent Jews across German-occupied Europe, a little boy in Boyne’s 2006 bestseller, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, was constantly worried for his Jewish friend ‘on the other side of the fence’, of course in the author’s fantasy land.
In an era when Professor Snape taught children the secrets of the magical world, and Roald Dahl’s characters emerged as a whopping hit, Boyne delivered a gut-wrenching and soul-stripping story of a German boy, Bruno, the protagonist of the story, who made a friend… a Jewish detainee named Shmuel.
Throughout the book, Boyne has maintained a subtle poise, an equilibrium that juxtaposes the mind of a child amidst wartime.
Set during World War II, the author outlines Bruno’s family, a normal one. There’s nine-year-old Bruno, his elder sister Gretel, parents, a maid, Maria and Pavel, their chef. The author understands the need to give his story life as he displays values imbibed in the children, albeit constant bickering. In one instance, Bruno’s mother says, “Don’t interrupt your mother when she’s talking, please.”
In a sudden turn of events, the family is ordered to relocate from Berlin to “Out-With”, his childlike mispronunciation of Auschwitz – the camp of death, after Hitler, “the Fury”, another innocent mispronunciation of Fuhrer, promotes the father to Commandant and transfers him to the deadliest concentration camp.
From the beginning, Boyne maintains that the plot of the story is not apparent as he does not reveal names, rather, he lets his story do the talking.
The author has undoubtedly spun a masterpiece, a brilliant story followed by a wretched, tragic end. After all, what more could one expect from a book that cleverly highlights the many atrocities Hitler shepherded during his reign?
The Holocaust began with Hitler and his Nazi regime gaining not only prominence, but a loyal fan following, evident from one extract in the book. The author writes, “He (Bruno) opened the door and Father called him back for a moment, standing up and raising an eyebrow as if he’d forgotten something. Bruno remembered the moment his father made the signal, and said the phrase and imitated him exactly. Heli Hitler, which he presumed, was another way of saying, ‘Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon.’”
It is no brainer that the most special aspect of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is neither the family, nor Hitler… it is the friendship that sparkled amidst the historical tragedy.
Progressing into the story, Bruno’s life at Auschwitz overcomes his feeling of loneliness as he makes a friend, a little bald boy – one of the many captured Jews, Bruno sees across the fence through his window.
Boyne describes beautifully, Bruno’s adventurous journey along the fence, a few several miles that he decides to voyage one fine day. Before heading off in that direction, though, there was one final thing to investigate and that was the plaque on the bench, which he read – Presented on the occasion of the opening of Out-With Camp. June nineteen forty.
His exploration, however, bears fruit after Bruno discovers behind the fence, a little boy wearing the same striped pyjamas as everyone else, with a striped cloth cap on his head, and an armband with a star on it, waiting to be discovered.
To rightly opine, the Irish author has left no stone unturned – his book stands the test of time, serving a classic tale of companionship. “Well, I found you,” Bruno says to the boy in their very first interaction.
If a list of ‘innocent bonds’ were to be made, Bruno and Shmuel’s friendship would top the said list.
Moving ahead, Bruno’s frequent trips along the fence become an almost everyday affair as if an external force reckoning that they belong with each other.
For his book, Boyne received widespread acclaim and praise, which undoubtedly, he deserved. That said, the author was also subject to harsh criticism given the sequence of events.
A rather uncanny extract in the book describes Bruno’s willingness to shift in Shmuel’s world, which he deems the perfect fit for him, unlike his sprawling mansion filled with maids, cooks, drivers, and gardeners.
He says, “It’s so unfair. I don’t see why I have to be stuck over here on this side of the fence where there’s no one to talk to and no one to play with and you get to have dozens of friends and are probably playing for hours every day.”
A 2006 novel, set in the wartime era speaks volumes about connections formed irrespective of class, race, or gender – while Bruno refers to his sister as a “Hopeless Case”, he mentions that Shmuel is his “twin brother”.
In no time, the inseparable friends hatch a plan to have Bruno sneak into the camp. Shmuel gives him an extra pair of prison clothes – the same striped ones as his – since Bruno (as it is) had no sense of bias in mind. “What exactly was the difference? He wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pyjamas and which people wore the uniforms?”
Once inside the camp, Bruno encounters a brief version of life the detainees led behind the fence, after months of speculation that he did peeping through his window. The curious exploration, however, is short-lived after the duo gets trapped and hurled among a chaotic swarm of Jewish detainees.
As tragic as the end is, Boyne creates an atmosphere of anxiety, as readers stress through the author’s depiction of the sky getting darker, almost black, and rain pouring down even more heavily than it had in the morning. As Bruno longs to return to his humble abode, which perhaps was a sudden realisation, he is swept away along with a huge crowd into a dark room with nothing but Shmuel’s hand in his.
“… Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel’s hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.”
Boyne creates a void; his brilliant book raises questions regarding objectionable (yet justified for the Fuhrer) actions of mass murders across German-occupied Europe. Isn’t it beyond imagination, the execution of six million Jews?
While answers and explanations will fall short, Boyne’s book will remind us forever, of a kind German boy who risked it all for a boy in striped pyjamas across the fence.