12 Dec 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?