Ok not adult fiction but has anyone read Boy in the Striped Pjamas?

[RachieW]

Was hoping someone has as I don't know of any friends who've read it and need to know if anyone else was completely surprised by the ending?

I just finished it last night and until the last few chapters thought it was an ok book but the ending blew me away and now I think it's brilliant. I was just so shocked by the end in both a, wow I never expected that, way and also by the whole chill factor. I've been thinking about it all day.

I thought it was okay actually: I didn't have an issue wih a nine year old boy being naive, as they can be. It is our modern society that has allowed children to become older and 'knowing' in so many ways. Of course, it may not be entirely plausible or accurate but that's fiction for you, 'willing suspension of disbelief' and all that!

I did see the end coming and read on in horror waiting for it to happen.

Ultimately though, I thought it was only okay and I have no interest at all in seeing the film.

Moving away from books has anyone watched Life is Beautiful? Just thinking about that film makes me want to cry.

That is actually one of my favourite films of all time, Rachel. Along with "Les 400 Coups", which is not about the war however.

don't agree at all about these stories being 50/50

what other side? the nazis???

of course you can't know what it was truly like unless you were there. But what we do know is pretty much undisputed, apart from a few bizarre people who claim the whole thing never happened.

the Primo Levi books are accounts of his own time in Auschwitz, so not really "stories"

Mine too. When I first started watching it I had no idea where it was going, though I knew it was about concentration camps and I found Guido quite annoying. But by the end I loved him, I think it's one of the few films that has made me laugh and cry at the same time. The scene when he is translating to Joshua what the Nazi's are saying is so funny but so sad. Talking about it makes me want to watch it again.

oh god no, I am not implying the nazi side at all.

more that you and I could have gone in, and you would have one story, I could have another, and then their could be the real deal (I hope you get what I mean).

no one really see's the whole thing as we all base what we see on our previous experiences and personalities etc. and also, what terrifies me might not bother you.

I will loom out for the primo levi accounts tho as, like 'hidden children', it sounds true rather than as an outsider looking in.

I closed the book when I finished it and just wept. More at the fact it brought home the enormity of the holocuast on a personal level.

Brilliant, poignant, and shocking book.

i started but after a few nights of face twisting and some tears dp took it off me

I read it, found it not very challenging, very one dimensional characters. It reads like a child's book, which I took it for.
And I guessed waht would happen in the end. So, didn't find it that shocking.

Oh good questions Ruby, your second is very clever and something I hadn't even thought of. I'm not sure which one now are you? I assumed Shumel but now I'm thinking maybe Boyne meant Bruno.

The answer to the first to the ending being shocking imo is because you don't expect Bruno to die, whereas you know through history that it is likely Shumel will. But as I mentioned in the an earlier post that's what I think is clever about the book because for me I got caught up in the story, read the end, was really shocked. But then immediatley after I closed the book I didn't like that I was so shocked because reading the end it seemed more difficult to accept that Bruno died than Shumel and all of the other Jews. Which of course it isn't. So maybe that's the point of the book to kind of challenge people and reinforce how terrible the holocaust was?

Hmm I'm not sure I'm putting this very eloquently but hopefully you get where I'm coming from?

Phew glad I made sense Ruby! Have to say feels like this is the first time I've used the small part of my brain that feels academic in a long time

I thought it was quite good.

Bruno does seem very naive but then we don't know if this is plausible or not. He also seems very selfish at times in a way that strikes a chord with me about how 9 year old boys can be and this made him seem more realistic.

I agree that it seems very very unlikely/impossible that part of the fence would be unguarded or loose but I didn't mind this stretching of the truth because it made the tragic ending possible. I also think that the poignancy of the book for me was in the way that either boy could be "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" and to me this helped to make the point that in genocide very superficial differences between individuals can make the difference between life and death for them. Dressing up in another boy's clothes was enough to get Bruno killed but in contrast wouldn't have been enough to save Shumel.

I couldn't bring myself to read it. My DS is called Sam, Shmuel in hebrew.

I would recommend Night by Elie Wiesel. It is a very short/ "simple" book of his experience at Auschwitz.

Haven't read the book but rented the dvd last night after my dsd suggested it was worth watching.

Film was very moving and poignant. I sobbed almost throughout (although I am very pg and hormonal). What is interesting about the dvd is the extra footage. The cast and crew did lots of research and read diaries of some of the germans involved with the camps.

The film demonstrates Bruno's mother's naivete as well (I think they said that wasn't in the book). She believed they were simply prison/work camps. Apparently the director of the film said the wives of the commandants of Auchwitz and Sobibor (sp?) were unaware of the gas chambers.

I remember watching the film Escape from Sobibor when I was about 13 and it having a profound affect on me. Whilst watching this last night I wondered if this film had affected dsd similarly. DH was shocked that she'd watched anything that didn't have either Zac Efron or some equally annoying american teens in it!

Silkcushion - that is exactly the bone of contention. Some Germans after the war claimed they had no idea what was really going on in Auschwitz and other places. Yet as early as 41 suspicions were publicly broadcast on BBC radio. (The Final Solution kicked in far more during the latter years of the war.)

I worked in Germany in a huge institution for children/adults with special needs. During the war they were sent a list of individuals for transportation, and the leaders fought as hard as they could for each case and managed to get some reprieved. They knew exactly where these people were going and that they would never come back. It may not have been publicly spoken about, but it was generally understood. They still have all the records from the time and it makes chilling reading.

After these individuals (over a hundred I think) were transported with their bags, all their possessions were then returned to the centre. There is a long, typewritten list detailing all their clothing and possessions that were being returned. This sort of obsessive attention to detail whilst committing genocide is horrific to me. Just thinking of those lists sends a chill down my spine.

But those lists also make it clear that by that time all those people were dead, that is the only possible conclusion from the fact that all there things were being returned. And at the time Everyone knew that. Everyone understood that. Everyone expected that.