Birmingham Stage Company

The Boy


12 December 2008

Needing something to do, I popped in to watch the last 30 minutes of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a film I'd sort of avoided. I started crying after about 3 minutes. What a beautifully structured story and what a simple, expertly executed film.

It is still almost incomprehensible, after everything we now know, and despite the best efforts of deluded and fascistic idiots like David Irving, that a group of men went about the systematic destruction of 12 million people as if they were constructing a large housing project.

It's why films about the holocaust are so hard to pull off - and why this one is so remarkable for picking a simple story to illustrate the mind-numbing horror of what those people - people who still walk the streets of Germany today - did in the name of their Fuhrer. It's a story that can never be told enough - because it will always be impossible to properly fathom.

How did it happen? Can we really be sure it will never happen again?


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