The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - review

Eight year old Bruno loves exploring and playing with his friends near his family home in Berlin. So when his father is given a promotion and informs the family they are moving house, Bruno isn’t happy. Relocated to a house surrounded by trees and without a garden, Bruno makes up his mind he doesn’t like it and he also doesn’t like the soldiers who spend their days walking in and out as if they live there too.

Having built a swing in the driveway and forced to be home-schooled, Bruno is bored and longs to find someone to play with. As he discovers from the window in his bedroom, the family aren’t as alone as he first thought when he spies what he believes to be a farm with people working on it not far away.

When he gets the chance, Bruno finds a way to get to the farm and discovers Shmuel, an eight year old boy sitting on the other side of a wire fence who is delighted to see another child. As the two of them get to know each other playing checkers and talking, they realise they could be friends and Bruno visits Shmuel as much as he can although he’s confused why everyone on the farm is wearing pajamas.

As his curiosity gets the better of him, Bruno asks his sister Gretel about the farm and is shocked when she tells him it’s a prison for Jews and that they deserve to be kept away from everyone else. Despite what Gretel says, Bruno is determined to keep meeting with Shmuel and continues his daily visits, but when Shmuel is caught eating while working in the family home, Bruno is scared into pretending not to know him and allows him to be beaten.

With his mother also struggling with the relocation of the family and his sister’s head being turned by a young soldier, Bruno spends more time with Shmuel away from the house and eventually arranges for them to play together by Bruno digging under the fence. Shmuel manages to steal a pair of pajamas so he won’t be recognised and together they both set off in search of Shmuel’s father who has been missing for a few days.

However while the two of them search, Bruno is surprised when he realises the camp is very different to the one shown in the video his father and fellow soldier’s recently watched and decides he wants to go home, but before he can leave, Bruno is caught up in a roundup of prisoners who are led into a chamber for what they’re told will be a shower.

Based on the novel by John Boyne which I have read, I was fully aware of what this movie was about and how it would end. However I wanted to watch it and also felt I needed to having visited the real Auschwitz and seeing firsthand the camp where so many people were led to under false hope.

This powerful movie really brought it home how lucky we are to live in the world today and not during the war when so many were controlled and led to their deaths due to the beliefs of one man.

I feel this is a movie everyone should watch if only for the reason to realise how privileged and lucky we are today.

Carrie's War by Nina Bawden

As Carrie Willow and her children walk along the railway line where she and her younger brother Nick spent time in their youth, memories come flooding back reminding her of a lifetime gone by. With time spent in the Welsh valley during the 2^nd World War, Carrie and Nick had to adjust to the quiet village which was a world away from bustling London, but a change which would live with them forever.

Thirty years before, Carrie and Nick among other children are led onto the train taking them to a new life. With their father away at war and having said goodbye to their mother, they’re alone in the sense of being the only people each other know. Sent to live with Mr Evans, a strict and domineering grocer and his weak and quiet sister Auntie Lou, Carrie and Nick quickly become used to the running of the house and learn that Mr Evans isn’t someone to mess with.

As they start to explore their surroundings they discover Druids Bottom, a grove surrounded by fields and a pond housing a small cottage where Mr Evans’s other sister Mrs Gotobed lives with her housekeeper Hepzibah and Mr Johnny, a simple young chap who speaks his own language. Alfred Sandwich, a fellow evacuee also lives there giving Carrie and Nick an excuse to spend a lot of time at the cottage having lunch, spending time in the fields and listening to Hepzibah’s stories, although Carrie feels some of them are too young for her.

As time goes by, Carrie and Nick become used to living in the country, but can’t help feel homesick during times such as Christmas and birthdays, although their new found friends do all they can to make them feel at home. And when their mother writes to them asking them to join her in Glasgow, they find themselves sad to say goodbye to a village which for a short time had become home.

This is a book which I’ve had on my shelf since I was young, but have never had the urge to read it. Knowing it was set during World War II, being a young girl I had no interest in learning about the war or reading about children being sent away from their parents, but now that I’m older I find myself interested in what happened years ago, so was keen to finally give the story a break from sitting on the shelf and open the pages which had patiently waited years to be read.

I wasn’t completely sure what angle on the war this book would take, but I found Carrie’s War a great insight into how children must have felt during the war and how they adjusted to a different life despite missing their parents.