How Useful Is the Boy in Striped Pyjamas About Telling Us?

How useful is the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in telling us about the Holocaust? The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, shows what life was like in Germany when the Nazis were taking over. The film tells us about two young boys with two different lives. The Boy in the Striiped Pyjamas is useful about some topics based in that time however it can also be unreliable in others. The Holocaust was mainly a target for Jewish people, black people, homesexuals, gypsies and the physically disabled, the mentally disabled and those involved in resistance movements against Hitler..

The Jewish people were the main traget and this chatastrophe started when Hitler came into power. The holocaust was a bruital place for those people, they had no other choice but to do slave labour, such as people had to work in tunnels and starve to death. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas explains the Age of the Victims. The film suggests that age tended to vary from young children to old men. This showed a unuseful report because during that time Nazis would kill those who were old of age and useless at working.

This rule would automatically apply for those who were physically and mentally disabled. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas only showed one child which meant the rest were adults. This was useful because sources show that there were the odd few of children but mainly adults in the concentration camps. This was because adults are more useful in terms of working. The film also explains the gender of the victims the film showed that there were only men in the camps. This was unreliable because other sources show that the gender also tended to vary with women also.

However the sources did show that there were more men than women, so this meant men were stronger than women and could work more than women. There has been disagreement however whether or not men are stronger then women. “Men were stronger so would live longer”, I disagree with this statement because if women survived they would form a friendship with each other and therefore be able to support one another if they were sick and so could rely on each other. Also, the film showed what the work was like in the camps for a person.

The film showed that people were forced to build and manufacture and they would all were the same uniform to represent that they were not and individual in the camps. The film also showed they were allowed to work outside of camps and work indoors with other families and work as a slave in their homes. This was reliable because everyone who were in the camp all had to wear the same uniform, and they did build and manufacture. But they also had to work in the tunnels , mining but mostly they worked until they died or were no longer fit to work and were sent to die.

The rule that applied while working was if you could work well you would live, if not you would die. The film showed the small amount of food the people were getting. The young boy Shmall, explained the lack of food they were getting. The film showed Bruno bringing food to Shmall and how he ate it like a beast out of starvation. This was reliable because this represented that they did not get much to eat and some were forced to starve. Sources explains that each victim in the camp would get a slice of bread and sometime margarine and marmalade in the morning.

Midday they would get potato soup and maybe a little of meat. Although the film did not show this they did show that the victims were skinny and many were starving. The film however did not show any escape from any victims in the camps. But showed that the electric fence surrounding the camp was that there was only one however sources show there were two so this meant, the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was unreliable. Escape from the camps was almost impossible but I believe it was all done by luck. At least on stats, 802 attempted to escape and only 144 succeeded.

The victims who did escape did not realise the consequences that 10 people, selected randomly, by luck, in the camp would be killed if one victim escaped from the camp. The film did not show any survival in the camp which shows that the film is unreliable. Sources show that surviving in the concentration camp had to fight against the harsh conditions they were living in. There was less food, space and less opportunity to be with friends or family. The labour was even more difficult and exhausting; there was constant punishment and stricter rules and regulations regarding every intimate detail of life.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas also showed death in the concentration camps. They showed how men were beaten if they had done something wrong, spilt wine accidentally on the soldier and had used gas chambers to kill the people, by tricking them thinking it was a shower. This was reliable, however there were quotes made such as “Luck was the only reason people survived”, I agree with this statement because Viktor Frankl, worked as a kitchen carrier supplier, and how he explained how he explained how without his job he wouldn’t have survived by eating crumbs from the floor.

There were other bruital ways of dying in the camps, some soldiers will allow you to starve to death by not giving you your breakfast or lunch, some others were immediately shot dead if they had done something wrong. I believe the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is unuseful because it has given inaccurate accounts such as, men were the only people in these camps or no one escaped from the camps. It has however given some information such as how some people were killed in the gas chambers, but did not show how other people had died in more bruital impact other than a gas chamber.

Also it has given an inaccurate account by implying that the people only worked by building and manufacuring when there were more jobs, working in the mines and dug holes for those who had lost their lives in the concentration camp. So summarising my view points I think the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is unuseful and unreliable, because it has shown an inaccurate account of what life was like inside the camp and in my personal opinion was much more brutal than they had shown.