I read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. It was a very good book. It is fiction but had true events in it. The setting was based in Germany during the Holocaust. The main character is a boy named Bruno.            

Bruno is eight years old. He happily lived in Berlin then he had to move to a town a couple hours away due to his father’s job. He doesn’t really know much about his dad except that he is an important soldier for the Nazi Government. “Well, because Germany is the greatest of all countries, we’re superior”. (Page 112) Bruno only knows what his family tells him of course.  Bruno loves to explore so one day he looked out his window and saw what he thought was a farm. What Bruno didn’t know was that in all actuality it was a concentration camp.

One day Bruno snuck out of his house to check out the farm. This was not a smart decision by Bruno at all. When he got there he was met by a small Jewish boy on the other side of a big fence. The boy’s name was Shmuel and he was also eight years old. Shmuel looked beat up and a little bit smaller than Bruno. Shmuel wore stripped pajamas. “It’s so unfair, I don’t see why I have to be stuck over here on this side of the fence where there’s no one to talk to and no one to play with and you get to have dozens of friends and are probably playing for hours every day”. (Page 110-111) Bruno didn’t understand Shmuel’s position.

Bruno continued to visit Shmuel on a daily basis and bring him food. Then one day Shmuel told Bruno that he could find his dad, so Bruno dug a hole under the fence and crawled under and into the camp. This was Bruno’s biggest mistake in his whole life. Shmuel gave him a pair of pajamas and they were on their way to find his dad. They went to Shmuel’s hut first where at least 100 other prisoners. But a few minutes later German soldiers stormed in and ordered everyone out and in a new building. No one knew what was happening but they were going to be gassed to death.

His parents noticed Bruno was missing after a couple of hours. With the help of the German soldiers at his house they were able to track Bruno to the camp. They got in the camp and searched for Bruno but it was too late. Bruno, Shmuel, and the prisoners had already been gassed and were dead. This is a very sad ending.