For this blog I read the book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. This book is about Bruno, a 9 year old German boy, whos father is an officer in the Nazi army. At the beginning of the book they live in a 5-story house in Berlin, Germany, but then his dad gets assigned to work at the miltary base called Off-With, which really is Auschwitz. Bruno doesn't want to move away from Berlin, and he tries to convince his mom to let them stay, because he doesn't want to loose his friends. No matter what he says he has to go with his parents to Auschwitz. Bruno is told that he can't explore in their back yard, but he doesn't listen. He sneaks out back, and goes through the woods, and comes to a fence, where he finds a boy about his age sitting on the other side.
They quickly become friends and soon Bruno is sneaking out back everyday to go see Schmuel, the Jewish boy. Bruno asks his dad about the people that are on the oter side of the fnce, and his dad tells him not to associate with them because they're not really people. Bruno doesn't believe that, because Shmuel has become his best friend. They're even born on te same day. Only differences between them is their 3 year age difference and the fact that Schmuel is a Jew and Bruno is a German. Nearly a year later Bruno, his sister, and his Mom are ordered to go back to Berlin. But the day they were going to leave Bruno went to say goodbye to Schmuel, and to help him find his dad because Schmuels dad had gone missingin the camp. Bruno put a striped suit on, and climbed under the fence. Suddenly they start a march, neither of the boys know where they're going..they marc and march, and end up in a gas chamber. The story ends with Bruno and Schmuel sitting in there holding eachothers hands...and in the epilogue it states that they were gassed.
I really liked this book. It was sad, but I couldn't put it down when I read it. I think that theres a very good chance that something like this could have happened. Maybe not exactly like this, but maybe there was a german kid that accidentally got put into a concentration camp and something like this happened to him, I cwouldn't doubt it at all.
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