The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas

This is a very cleverly written book as we see events in Germany during the Second World War through the eyes of a young boy called Bruno. We meet him as he has to leave everything in Berlin to move with his dads job. The innocence with which the story is told is what makes this story so compelling. As Bruno gradually discovers what his dad does at 'Out-with' as camp commandant.

Bruno's growing friendship with Shmuel who lives the other side of the fence is a fascinating mix of honest conversation and yet things they will not ask because it makes them uncomfortable. The end of the story does not sneak up on you, but neither is it so blindingly obvious that it ruins that book.

The book does give us an insight into the natural revulsion of a child to racism. As Bruno struggles to understand why a Jewish doctor is reduced to the role of a waiter, as he is appalled at the treatment of that man by the soldiers. In fact the mother's discomfort with the situation is also made apparent. It proves the maxim that all it takes for evil to prosper is good people to do nothing.

However, it also reveals to us the depth of evil man is capable of. We live in a world where such atrocities are not a one off event. Iraqi treatment of the Kurds, Hutu treatment of Tutsi's and other examples of ethnic cleansing cause us to recoil. Yet they keep happening, ordinary people with wives families, children keep perpetrating the most awful crimes. And no sociological theory adequately explains why? Indeed that is one of the cleverest parts of this book, we see Bruno's father as a moral man, a good father and yet he is the camp commandant overseeing 'Out-with'.

It confronts us with the problem we all have, we are a contradiction of the good and the bad, capable of great love and great hate. Capable of kindness and of cruelty, great good and great evil.

What Shmuel needs is someone to free him from the fence. Bruno devastatingly lets him down when he could defend him and then in an attempt to rebuild the relationship goes under the fence, taking on the role of a prisoner with the shaved head and stripped pyjamas to help Shmuel find his missing father. It is a gesture that ends in the shower block.

In one sense Bruno's actions are like those of Jesus. He too becomes what he is not, in Jesus case human. But Jesus incarnation is not futile but he is able to save, to save us from the contradiction that is our hearts, to save us from our sins and help us find our Father. He does so not by dying with us but by dying for us, in our place, and he guarantees our future by rising again and going to prepare a place for us.