All the Broken Places

Boyne’s portrayal of the Holocaust has received criticism, and while the criticism centers on The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, it also applies to All the Broken Places, which routinely references the first book’s story. Holocaust Centre North, a Holocaust education and awareness organization in England, published a post that lists several issues (Randall, Hannah. “The Problem With ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” Holocaust Centre North, 17 Sept. 2019). Randall says that Bruno and Shmuel wouldn’t be friends, as Bruno would be in the Hitler Youth, the official Nazi organization for young people, and he’d hate Jewish people and be aware of the Holocaust. The focus on Bruno, Randall contends, makes the reader sympathize with him, not Shmuel. As Shmuel doesn’t fight, readers might believe that Jews were passive. Randall writes, “It is important that people understand that Jewish people did not go to their deaths without trying to save themselves” (Randall).

As Hilberg shows with the death squad members, the presence of virulent antisemitic propaganda doesn’t automatically produce people eager to murder Jews. In Parallel Journeys (1995), nonfiction author Eleanor H. Ayer brings together the true stories of Hitler Youth member Alfons Heck and Holocaust survivor Helen Waterford. In the 1980s, Alfons and Helen teamed up to promote understanding of the Holocaust and why genocide happens. Though Alfons was a loyal Hitler Youth member, he thought the Nazis sent Jews into forced labor, and he’s not so much antisemitic as indifferent. This parallels Gretel’s assertion that the Hitler Youth was essentially a chance to socialize. As with Kurt Kotler, what captivates Alfons is the power of the Nazis (and the chance to be a part of the prestigious German air force, the Luftwaffe). Alfons’s and Helen’s partnership reveals that stories don’t erase one another. Listening to Alfons’s story doesn’t mean that people tune out Helen’s. Likewise, sympathizing with Gretel or Bruno doesn’t preclude the reader from feeling compassion for Shmuel or the millions of other murdered Jews.

While many Jews tried to save themselves by hiding or moving to different countries, they didn’t, for the most part, forcefully confront Nazis. In Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto (trans. Jacob Sloan, Schocken, 1947), the Polish historian and Warsaw Ghetto captive Emmanuel Ringelbaum asks, “Why did we allow ourselves to be led like sheep to slaughter? Why did everything come so easy to the enemy?” (310). When the Nazis took over an area, they created groups of local Jewish leaders, known as Jewish Councils, tasking them with the burden of creating lists of people to send to the concentration camps. By cooperating with the Nazis, the Jewish Councils thought they’d mitigate the terror, but they were wrong. The lack of resistance doesn’t place blame on the Jews but exposes the extreme insidiousness of the Nazi genocidal program.

Despite their open hatred for Jews, the Nazis tried to conceal their genocidal actions. They used allusive terms like “deported,” “transported,” and “liquidation,” and they made propaganda videos presenting the camps as humane spaces. Gretel’s father is a central part of one such film. Like the real-life commander of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, Gretel’s father lives with his family in a different part of the camp, but it’s unlikely that a commander or top official would show their child the camp, as Gretel’s father does. The genocide was a professional duty, not a display.

As with Höss, the Allies hang Gretel’s father. The Allies put top Nazi officials on trial for war crimes in the German city of Nuremberg—known as the Nuremberg Trials—but they didn’t target children or spouses. Nathalie asks Gretel, “Do you want us both to be dragged to Nuremberg to answer for your father’s crimes?” (142), but that likely wouldn’t have happened in real life, just as the Allies didn’t put Höss’s children or wife on trial.

The criticism of Boyne is partly due to his popularity. Schools often use The Boy in the Striped Pajamas to teach students about the Holocaust. Readers and teachers should understand Boyne is writing historical fiction, not nonfiction, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and All the Broken Places aren’t true stories or absolutely accurate. The books don’t provide a definitive account, but no book or series of books can do that as the Holocaust is too complex.