I just got round to seeing the movie. Possibly I'm the last person in the country to do so. The ending left me wondering what the actual point was. I've sat and thought about it for a while. We already got the message that the holocaust was awful, so that can't have been it. Maybe it was meant as a 'how would the Germans like it if it happened to one of them?' scenario, but I doubt that such a thing would make any hard line Germans think differently. They'd probably just say it proved they were right about the Jews. A very well made movie apart from the pointlessly miserable ending.

Hi Emma

what do you mean by a 'hardline German'? do you mean a hardline Nazi?

It is an important distinction.

I’ve never been able to figure out why the Nazi’s hated the Jews so much, nor why they hated them so much that they wanted the entire race exterminated. All Jews, each and every Jew. Maybe that’s because I can only hate in the singular, not the plural. For instance, if a Jewish man broke into my home and smashed my valuable record collection to pieces with a sledgehammer, I’d hate him for it. But I wouldn’t be hating him because he was a Jew, but because he destroyed my record collection. So how the Nazi’s could murder millions of Jewish people who had done them no harm is beyond my understanding. I suppose it only proves that there are some very evil people in the world. I am not Jewish myself and know very little about their religion. But being murdered not for anything you’ve done, but because of who you are is an appalling thing to happen to anyone. I have not seen the film The Boy in Striped Pajamas as yet. Maybe I’ll take a look at it one day. But I hear it’s a good film, even if it does have an odd title.

Yes, I was disappointed by the ending when I saw it. I didn't think it opened up any new thoughts or discussions about the holocaust / final solution. I left the cinema feeling totally let down.

Also, having seen and visited some of the death camps I know that there was also more than one wire fencing with guard towers covering every angle. That anyone could visit daily and then dig a whole beneath the wire totally unseen is total fantasy. But I guess that could be excused under poetic licence.

David, maybe the hardline Germans were the Nazis. Although I suppose you could argue that there were also those who took a hardline against Nazi-ism. But I'm sure some non Nazi Germans were completely taken in by the propaganda and believed the Jews were getting everything they deserved, just as today people are taken in by propaganda about Pedos and Terrorists. When you control the media you control millions of thoughts and opinions.

excellent post DR2- 'I can only hate in the singular' - how well said!

I have been to Auschwitz twice. The second time was in the depths of winter and it was -20c. It just beggared belief how people could have survived in those huts in conditions like that. My friend and I walked through Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and the snow was untouched, so no one had been there for a couple of days. Before I went I had been reading Primo Levi's remarkable book 'If There Was A God' (I think that was the title, in which he describes arriving at the camp and being herded into a hut with several other prisoners. The weather was so hot and they hadn't had a drink for a couple of days and were desperately thirsty. There was a dripping tap in the hut, but written above it was in German: 'Danger- contaminated water'. He described that as perfect torture.

My friend and I pushed open the door to one of the huts and walked in. I sat down on one of the bunks and the door creaked shut revealing a tap with those very samewords written above it. It sent a chill through me.

On a separate occasion I got talking to an elderly Polish man in the town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz)and I asked him whether they had known what was happening in the camp, as I couldn't believe anyone could not be aware. Auschwitz I is virtually in the town itself and not that far from the road. He told me that yes of course they had been aware and then said with sadness: 'but what could anyone do? we were just ordinary people.' I saw his point. It was a very interesting but sad conversation.

I went to both the Auschwitz camps. The one in the town and the one further out in the country with the rail line running into it (the main death camp). There was also a factory but this was destroyed by the German forces shortly before the allies arrived. The one in the town is intact but has a very museum feel about it with display cases and image galleries, etc. The death camp had a very eerie atmosphere about it with no sign of wildlife. I'd been told that birds don't sing at Auschwitz and my visit showed that to be true, as though even nature is ashamed of what went on there.

My companion on the visit was an elderly Polish man who had escaped the death camps by working as a slave in Germany. As the allies approached the gestapo officer ordered that he be shot but the ordinary German office workers saved his life. His was a fascinating story. After the war he found himself no better off under communist rule so he took the first boat to freedom which landed him in Australia. Then he moved to England and in recent years has expressed his alarm that he sees the same things happening here. The sequence of events is almost an exact mirror, he says, and he believes that mankind has learned no lessons from history.

Didn't impress me much as a film,but that's just personal taste.

As a sidenote rich jews trying to make a point with these films,then sending money to support the state of Israel,which does similar things to the Palestinians seems a bit of a contradiction.

The Nazis didn't just hate Jews,what about Eastern Europeans,Gypsys,Gays,Communists? ....they destroyed many,not just the one group.
The only lesson to learn from the whole war period is 'tolerance'.We're still a long way away from that,& I feel gettin' worse.

very true, IA.

the Nazis killed gypsies, gay people, political prisoners etc.

but (referring to an earlier post) if we confuse Nazis with Germans we too will succumb to racial stereotyping.

And that is bad. Always.

True about the difference between Germans & Nazis David,after all I wouldn't like to be judged in the same way as Blair & Brown.I've never been responsible for the mass murder of people in Iraq.

Innocent Accused wrote:
True about the difference between Germans & Nazis David,after all I wouldn't like to be judged in the same way as Blair & Brown.I've never been responsible for the mass murder of people in Iraq.

Some might say that re-electing Blair after he'd ordered the invasion of Iraq and approved of the consequences makes us all partly responsible. The same can be said of the Germans who stood by and did nothing to stop Hitler, although it's true that in both cases there have been people who have spoken out against the regimes.

The Boy In Striped Pyjamas was a good movie spoiled by a bad ending. I think it was based on a book, so not entirely the scriptwriter's fault. I'm also not sure what the point was. For me, The Pianist was a much better movie.

yet to see this film but Gita Sereny's books are excellent to get a good feel of pre war Germany.

Especially her biography of Eva Braun..fascinating in it's depiction of banal evil.