The Film

Selected Awards, Cast and Director:



Selected Awards:   2008 British Independent Film Awards: Best Actress (Vera Farmiga); Nominated: Best Director (Mark Herman) and Most Promising Newcomer (Asa Butterfield, as Bruno)

Featured Actors:  Asa Butterfield, Vera Farmiga, David Thewlis.

Director:  Mark Herman.

Helpful Background:

More than a million Jewish children below the age of 16 died in the Holocaust. Some historians estimate the loss at more than 1.5 million. Children from Gypsy communities and the mentally and physically disabled were also targeted for death by the Nazis. The death rate for children was higher than that for adults; it is estimated that 89 to 94 percent of the total population of Jewish children in German-occupied areas were murdered in Germany's effort to eliminate Jews from Europe, whereas only two-thirds, or about 67 percent, of the adult Jews died.

Jewish children living in German-controlled areas began to suffer from the Nazi ideology years before the camps were built. In 1933, for example, a law was passed that limited the number of Jewish children in public schools to 1.5 percent of the total of all children attending school. This figure included university students. Within five years, legislation was passed that prohibited Jews from attending German school altogether and Jewish schools were closed entirely in l942. The first concentration camp devoted entirely to killing Jews was opened in December 1941.

Children suffered terribly from the isolation and hardship forced upon their families by German legislators prior to the creation of the death camps. There were efforts to help Jewish children, but they only scratched the surface of the problem. "Kindertransports" transferred nearly 10,000 mostly-Jewish children to safe countries before war broke out in 1939. The United Kingdom was alone among the countries willing to help fund the process of rescuing the endangered children. British citizens paid nearly 250 dollars per child to move children between the ages of 3 and 17 out of threatened areas of Europe. Without the highly organized and perilous assistance of the Quakers, many of these children would have been forced to remain behind due to a Nazi edict that made it virtually impossible for Jews to use trams, trains, and port facilities. Aside from the assistance of the Quakers, there were individuals who came forward to assist in the effort to save the threatened children. One British citizen of German-Jewish ancestry, Nicholas Winton, established a rescue effort for Czech children that managed to send several hundred endangered children to safety. Only about 20% of the children who participated in the various rescue operations were eventually returned to their home countries and reunited with what remained of their families.

Efforts in the U.S. to help the Jews of Europe were limited by the entrenched anti-Semitism of the time. The most visible effort was called "One Thousand Children," a pitifully small number given the size of the United States and number of children in need. The plan was in effect between l934 and 1945, but efforts to expand the program met with difficulty when the Wagner-Rogers Bill, which would have permitted the admission of 20,000 Jewish refugee children, was rejected by Congress in 1939.

Before the war, European Jewish children were persecuted and isolated from the rest of society. After the onset of war, ghettos and transit camps were established in every country occupied by Germany and children began to suffer and die from malnutrition, disease, exposure, and eventually from outright murder in the death camps. Anne Frank, sent to a concentration camp after her family's hiding place was betrayed by an informant, died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in March of 1945, just two months before the War in Europe ended.

Non-Jewish German children faced a different sort of deprivation, which is in no way comparable to the difficulties faced by their Jewish or Gypsy counterparts. The boys were required to join the Hitler Youth organization and subjected to the militaristic mentality that would feed them directly into the Nazi party. The propaganda machine worked tirelessly on these children to remove any values or beliefs other than those promulgated by the Nazi party. Some reports indicate that boys as young as 12 years old participated in military units and fought directly against Allied forces. Girls, too, were expected to support Hitler's war efforts. Those between 10 and 18 years old were taught homemaking and nursing skills and were used to tend German troops injured on the battlefield. In the film, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," the methods used by the German propaganda machine are clearly portrayed in the scenes involving Gretel, the 12-year-old sister of the film's protagonist. The few young people who tried to resist that Nazi regime were dealt with cruelly.