_(english).jpg)
Soon there will be no more eyewitnesses. The Holocaust is inexorably moving from personal testimony to textual narrative.
Survivors, those who clung to life no matter how unbearable so that they could confirm the unimaginable and attest to the unbelievable, are harder to find after more than half a century. It is the written word that will have to substitute for the heart-rending tales of woe shared by those who endured hell on earth. That is, after all, all that will remain of six million victims.
Holocaust authors have a daunting responsibility.
Holocaust authors have a daunting responsibility. They must speak for those who cannot, but whose suffering demands to be remembered and whose deaths cry out for posthumous meaning. Their task transcends the mere recording of history. It is nothing less than a sacred mission. Holocaust literature, like the biblical admonition to remember the crimes of Amalek, deservedly rises to the level of the holy.
For that reason I admire anyone who is courageous enough to attempt to deal with the subject. No, there will never be too many books about this dreadful period we would rather forget. No, we have no right to ignore the past because it is unpleasant or refuse to let reality intrude on our preference for fun and for laughter. And John Boyne is to be commended for tackling a frightening story that needs to be told to teenagers today in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas -- a fictional account of the Nazi era that uses the powerful device of a tale told from the perspective of its nine year old hero.
I came to this book fully prepared to love it. Although the publisher insists that all reviewers not reveal its story, the back cover promises "As memorable an introduction to the subject as The Diary of Anne Frank." And indeed the writing is gripping. The style, sharing with Anne Frank the distinctive voice of youth, is extremely effective. One can readily understand why the book has had such a strong impact on countless readers, become required reading in high school Holocaust courses round the country, and is about to be released as a major motion picture.
And yet…
How should one react to a book that ostensibly seeks to inform while it so blatantly distorts? If it is meant as a way of understanding what actually happened -- and indeed for many students it will be the definitive and perhaps only Holocaust account to which they will be exposed -- how will its inaccuracies affect the way in which readers will remain oblivious to the most important moral message we are to discover in the holocaust's aftermath?
Without giving away the plot, it is enough to tell you that Bruno, the nine-year-old son of the Nazi Commandant at Auschwitz (never identified by that name, but rather as "Out-With" -- a lame pun I think out of place in context) lives within yards of the concentration camp his father oversees and actually believes that its inhabitants who wear striped pajamas -- oh, how lucky, he thinks, to be able to be so comfortably dressed --spend their time on vacation drinking in cafes on the premises while their children are happily playing games all day long even as he envies them their carefree lives and friendships! And, oh yes, this son of a Nazi in the mid 1940's does not know what a Jew is, and whether he is one too! And after a year of surreptitious meetings with a same-aged nine-year-old Jewish boy who somehow manages every day to find time to meet him at an unobserved fence (!) (Note to the reader: There were no nine-year-old Jewish boys in Auschwitz -- the Nazis immediately gassed those not old enough to work) Bruno still doesn't have a clue about what is going on inside this hell -- this after supposedly sharing an intimate friendship with someone surrounded by torture and death every waking moment!
According to the book's premise, it was possible to live in the immediate proximity of Auschwitz and simply not know -- the defense of those Germans who denied their complicity.
Do you see the most egregious part of this picture? As Elie Wiesel put it, the cruelest lesson of the Holocaust was not man's capacity for inhumanity -- but the far more prevalent and dangerous capacity for indifference. There were millions who knew and did nothing. There were "good people" who watched -- as if passivity in the face of evil was sinless. If there is to be a moral we must exact from the Holocaust it is the "never again" that must henceforth be applied to our cowardice to intervene, our failure to react when evildoers rush in to fill the ethical vacuum.
Yet if we were to believe the premise of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, it was possible to live in the immediate proximity of Auschwitz and simply not know -- the very defense of all those Germans after the war who chose to deny their complicity.
True, Bruno in the story was but a boy. But I have spoken to Auschwitz survivors. They tell me how the stench of burning human flesh and the ashes of corpses from the crematoria filled the air for miles around. The trains traveling with human cargo stacked like cordwood screaming for water as they died standing in their natural wastes without even room to fall to the ground were witnessed throughout every countryside. Nobody, not even little German children who were weaned on hatred of the Jews as subhuman vermin could have been unaware of "The Final Solution." And to suggest that Bruno simply had no idea what was happening in the camp his father directed yards from his home is to allow the myth that those who were not directly involved can claim innocence.
But it's only a fable, a story, and stories don't have to be factually accurate. It's just a naive little boy who makes mistaken assumptions. However that misses the point. This is a story that is supposed to convey truths about one of the most horrendous eras of history. It is meant to lead us to judgments about these events that will determine what lessons we ultimately learn from them.
So what will the students studying this as required reading take away from it? The camps certainly weren't that bad if youngsters like Shmuley, Bruno's friend, were able to walk about freely, have clandestine meetings at a fence (non-electrified, it appears) which even allows for crawling underneath it, never reveals the constant presence of death, and survives without being forced into full-time labor. And as for those people in the striped pajamas -- why if you only saw them from a distance you would never know these weren't happy masqueraders!
My Auschwitz friend read the book at my urging. He wept, and begged me tell everyone that this book is not just a lie and not just a fairytale, but a profanation. No one may dare alter the truths of the Holocaust, no matter how noble his motives.
The Holocaust is simply too grim a subject for Grimm fairytales.
Rabbi Benjamin Blech is the author of 12 highly acclaimed books, including Understanding Judaism: The basics of Deed and Creed. He is a professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University and the Rabbi Emeritus of Young Israel of Oceanside which he served for 37 years and from which he retired to pursue his interests in writing and lecturing around the globe. He is also the author of 
(81) Sharon Kerr, February 3, 2010
Horrified
I felt an instant 'hate' just after one sentence! The book should be taken off the shelf. In my view, it's as bad as 'Holocaust deniers'. I'm extremely angry. Don't think for one moment that a nine year old isn't capable of knowing there is something 'evil' going on. I must truly be different from most, for as a young child of four years of age even I knew the difference between 'good and evil' and certainly in some aspects of life I too have been naive, but not when it came down to 'cruelty' or 'hate'. When concerning something so horrific, brutal, and pure evil, there is no such thing as 'innocence' fables or stories. They had better be factual. I'm still shaking from anger.
(80) Anonymous, February 2, 2010
The innocence and citizenship was taken from everybody. If you think that Hitler was easy on children, your wrong. He put extreme pressures on kids. Dealing wit disease, people dying, and many unbearanle sites that you're not suppose to see when you're a child. This book does not make anything look like a walk in the park. It shows only the day where they don't do as much killing. It isn't meant to be graphic or anything extreme. The author only went to a certain extent for a reason. This is an issue where you can't fully understand it unless you were actually there. I'm going to tell while I was in class learning about the Holocaust, I was horrified! And that was my very firsst time ever learning about the Holocaust. It was so brutal and cruel. I was afraid to learn about anything else that happened during the Holocaust. This book shows what could have happened. If you think you know everything about the Holocaust, let me tell you there's more out there than what you think and what people portray.
(79) Anonymous, January 26, 2010
I think that although you are probably right about the general pervasion of knowledge about these horrors even among children. I think you underestimate the perhaps the possibility that innocence might not have been taken from every child, because a child is just that more innocent than an adult. Children are not equipped like with adult comprehension, even given adult information.
(78) Tom, December 28, 2009
just watched it
I thought this was a great movie. After watching it I had some factual questions. I do realize that having an 8-year old jew in a nazi camp might be inaccurate because I read in many of the killing camps the children and the disabled were killed off first. but Schmuley wasn't allowed to walk around the camp freely, he said this in the movie, many times he had to run off because someone blew a whistle. Also I thought that the fence was portrayed to be electrified. The fence was never touched and an electrifying sound was played when the chocolate bar hit the fence.
(77) Dara, November 10, 2009
the all powerful "edit" and "new edition"
It is not something to distort period. No matter the audience, the author should have taken it around A LOT before its printing. Edit, next edition the author could fix this. Let see if he does.