During the Holocaust, millions of Jews were killed as result of Hitler wanting to make a master race. It was a terrible event for Jewish adults, but more so for the children. Most children under 18 would have been killed, as the Nazis saw no use for them. In the story ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, and the movie ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ by John Boyne both stories follow two families that were of different races during the war.
In the novel ‘Night’ you follow along Elie and his father as they try to survive the Auschwitz concentration camp during the war. Throughout the book Elie and his father develop a stronger relationship and learn to take care of each other no matter what. Towards the end of the book, the roles are switched. Elie is now taking care of his father all the time instead of his father taking care of him. Elie’s father dies not to long before the war ends, and the Jews are released from the camps. In the movie ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ you follow Bruno and his family, who are German, that get moved to a house near a concentration camp. Bruno doesn’t understand quite what is happening, as he sees the prisoners as strange, pajama-wearing, farmers. He soon befriends a Jewish boy named Shmuel who becomes the only friend Bruno has. At one-point Bruno sneaks into the camp to help Shmuel find his father but is killed in a gas chamber with hundreds of other Jews.
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Some of the main differences in the two stories are as followed. In ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ the father/son relationship starts out stronger than in ‘Night’. Bruno’s father wants his son to be happy when they move to the country and protects him from what is going on as best to his abilities. In ‘Night’ Elie’s father is not as interested in Elie’s life at the beginning of the book, but it is quickly changed when they are forced into the camps. Another difference is how some prisoners work as servants instead of working at camp. In ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’, there is a Jewish prisoner who is forced to work at Bruno’s house as a servant.
Many similarities in the stories are camp life, treatment of prisoners, and how it follows two boys throughout the war. The camps in the ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ are surrounded by electrified barbed wire fences, and guards. The prisoners are also crammed into small shacks, without much cover from the cold. The camps in ‘Night’ are visualized as much of the same as in ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’. Prisoners in both stories are treated much the same. They are forced to work, and aren’t fed much either. They’re also forced to wear ragged clothes, shave their heads, and not have a name, but instead a number. Another similarity is how the Nazis made propaganda convincing people, who were opposed to the camps, that life in the camp wasn’t that bad. They had commercials showing happy prisoners, that had many activities to do. Many people didn’t know that the camps were a thing at the beginning of the war anyway.
In conclusion, these stories are both alike and different in many ways. They both follow a terrible event that happened from both sides of the war. The Holocaust was a horrible event for all Jews, especially young ones. All in all, millions from both sides of the war died, and the Jewish race was drastically thinned out. If Hitler had not been beat the Jewish race could have possibly been destroyed. In both works we have followed a young boy, one Jewish, one Nazi, and we have seen how terrible the Holocaust was from a first-hand account on one side, and a story that could have happened from the other side.
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