Striped Pyjamas

Ksenia, artist, New Zealand

The stain of the Holocaust is almost like a physical wound, as if one is perpetually having to place one’s hand in the Eternal Flame at Yad Vashem. Books and films about it are abundant. Stellar examples are, of course,  ‘Schindler’s Ark’ now ‘List’ and ‘The Pianist’ both having a place in the hall of fame, as has the movie I finally got around to watching yesterday, from John Boyne’s prizewinning children's novel ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, filmed in 2008. It has a deceptively simple plotline centring around Bruno, an eight year old boy whose father is the commandant of an extermination camp who illicitly befriends a ragged Jewish child of the same age on the other side of the electrified fence. The film begins with a quote from Betjeman: ‘Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights before the dark hour of reason grows’. The wide-eyed innocence of the little German boy is maintained right to the end, as he is sheltered from the horrors on the other side of the fence. We are left in no doubt about the brutality of events, the fictional proximity of the commandant’s house to the camp itself serves as a magnifying lens, but we’re meant to suspend disbelief and see the world through eight year old eyes, catching glimpses of the horror only through adult reactions to them.

Apparently, at the opening screening, after a devastating climax, quiet pervaded the auditorium right until the fade of the final credits.

One hundred and forty four people are known to have escaped from Auschwitz. One was a Pole who volunteered to go into Auschwitz and report to the world what he had seen, and, a Slovakian Jew who escaped when he was nineteen by hiding for three days in a pile of wood outside the electrified fences.  The story of their escape and subsequent early warnings to Hungarian Jewry saved countless lives.

Joel Rosenberg’s well-researched but fictional ‘The Auschwitz Escape’ tells the story of a German Jew and a French pastor determined to find freedom together. Luc, the unconventional pastor from the little village of Le Chambon in France, has been imprisoned for helping Jews. Many of the guards, who beat, kill, and torture six days a week  faithfully attend church every Sunday, but Luc is determined to show that work is love made visible. Jacob, the leading Jewish protagonist, does not become a Christian, but he is deeply moved by Luc's passion. Luc admits Martin Luther was the source of Hitler's propaganda, and apologizes to Jacob for every wrong thing Christians have done to Jews throughout the years. I know a little of how that feels, as if the skin is peeled back, exposing an open wound. The pastor never tries to convert anyone but refuses to remain willfully ignorant, as the majority of Christians in Europe did.

Today, there are dangerous new threats from ISIS, Iran, North Korea, and a rising czar in Russia. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor have each warned that as we confront current challenges we must be careful to learn the lessons of history regarding how the world failed to understand the threat posed by Hitler and the Nazis and deal with it decisively, before events spin out of control. Deep and abiding evil is still to be found in abundance. Today, the president of Kenya declared “we will not flinch” as al-Shabab terrorists perpetrated a massacre near the Somali border. They methodically separated the non-Muslims to be killed, sparing the Muslims.  36 people were marched to a gravel pit, where most were shot in the head, lying facedown on a stony hillside, with some beheaded.

Yes. The link between Nazism and militant Islam is entirely intentional.