The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

My daughter was prescribed this book in school and when I learnt that it was about the Holocaust, I was somewhat excited and I picked up the book myself. Was I disappointed? Big time! The book is supposed to be about the terrible and horrible things that happened in the Auschwitz concentration camp... Except that it is NOT!!! 

The story is narrated by a 9 year old German boy who develops an unusual friendship with a Jewish boy inside the camp. They interact and meet secretly for months and apparently talk a lot and yet there is not a single mention of what goes inside the camp. The names are all masked and "Auschwitz" becomes "Out-with" and "Führer" (Hitler) becomes "Fury" with the excuse that the 9 year old boy cannot pronounce the words correctly. Although the attempt is to portray that the children didn't understand the holocaust (neither the one outside the camp, nor the one inside it) but even the incidents that happen in front of the boy's eyes are missed out in explanation on the pretext that the boy cannot bring himself to mention it (such as the incident with the waiter Pavel when he spills wine on Lieutenant Kotler). It's highly surprising that in all those conversations Shmuel never once tells Bruno why he hates the soldiers and what he is going through (maybe he doesn't understand the why of it but he could have talked about the beatings or the bruises and how he got them).

I felt that in doing away with the disturbing stuff, the author is not doing the readers any favour, even if they might be young adults. On the contrary, he is absolutely undermining the holocaust. He is misleading the readers about what may have gone inside the camp - like a kid could everyday wander about and spend hours undetected; or a child go actually go under the fence (I had heard that the fences were electrocuted).

Coming to the book otherwise, although this is a young adult fiction, it can very easily be read by younger children. The language is very simple, words and phrases were repeated again and again and, as already mentioned, there was nothing disturbing in the story to trouble the innocent minds. If you want to introduce your 9-10 year olds to holocaust literature, this could be your pick. But, if you want to actually understand what the Jews went through during that horrifying period of History, avoid this book and pick some other.

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