Review of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008) by Hardrock302 — 22 Apr 2018

This movie is an excellent example of emotional manipulation. It manipulates the audience into feeling sympathy for the family of Nazis based on two impossible conditions. It is based on the idea that the son of a SS Commandant would be completely oblivious to Nazi racial politics, and that a young Jewish boy would be left alive at Auschwitz or allowed to go anywhere near the fence.

Both of these ideas are complete falsehoods and utterly impossible. During the period Auschwitz was killing Jews and other people deemed undesirable, enrollment in the Hitler youth would have been mandatory.

It is impossible for the main character, Bruno, to escape indoctrination in that circumstance. He would have hated the Jews and never would have considered fraternizing with one of them. The Jewish child would have been immediately gassed as he is too young to work at the camp.

If not that, he would have been shot or electrocuted for going anywhere near the fence. When the German child is killed in the end of the film, many reviews claim having felt sympathy and sorrow for his Nazi family.

Need I remind anyone that these people are responsible for this genocide and are, at the very least, complicit!? This film is incredibly dangerous as it is either a clever masterstroke of emotional manipulation showing how easily a viewing audience can be seduced or a pathetic and horrendous cash-grab and misrepresentation of history.

This film should be shunned or viewed with enormous prior historical context and as much annotation as Mein Kampf.