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Striped Pajamas Inaccuracies

Decent Essays

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a film produced in 2008. A colored movie, 94 minutes in length and given a motion picture rating of 7.8/10, it highlights the friendship between a Jewish concentration camp prisoner and the son of a Nazi commandant. The movie stars Asa Butterfield as Bruno, Jack Scanlon as Shmuel, Amber Beattie as Gretel, Vera Farmiga as Elsa (the mother of Bruno and Gretel), and David Thewlis as Ralf (father of Bruno and Gretel). Set in Berlin of Nazi Germany, the film begins when eight year old Bruno and his family must move from their home to a new house in "Out-With." Tempted to explore his new environment, Bruno is told that there are certain places that are off-limits. Nonetheless, Bruno walks into the unknown one afternoon. He follows a fence until he sees a young boy sitting on the other side. The shoeless boy is wearing striped pajamas. Bruno quickly befriends the boy who introduces himself as Shmuel. …show more content…

This film is historically accurate to a certain degree, but there are evident inaccuracies. For example the characters have British accents, which is incorrect as the movie is set in Germany. It would have been impossible as well for Shmuel and Bruno to have developed a relationship because children sent to camps were immediately killed as they were not old enough to work and seen as extremely weak. Another example is the ignorance of the characters in general. Bruno not knowing who Hitler is close to a child his age in modern day America who does not know who the President is. Bruno would probably have grown up in an environment very hostile to Jewish people, especially if his father is a high ranking official in the German army. He probably would not have befriended Shmuel. In the movie, Elsa was completely oblivious as to what happened in the concentration camps (or at least the burning of bodies). Being so close to Auschwitz there should have been no doubt as to what the foul smell

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