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1-Page Summary of The Boy In the Striped Pajamas
Overall Summary
A nine year old boy named Bruno leaves his home in Berlin, Germany. His father has been promoted and they have to move away because of it. They are moving to a small town called Out-With. The Fury (Adolf Hitler) came over for dinner at their house and invited the family to come live with him which is what led them to moving away from Berlin. It will be hard for Bruno since he has many friends there but he doesn’t really have a choice. He’s going no matter what happens or where he ends up living now that his parents made this decision without asking him first.
Bruno’s Grandmother gets into an argument with Father on Christmas about how she thinks it’s wrong that Father accepted the job offer from the Fury himself instead of just saying no like she did when the Fuhrer asked her if she would like to perform at one of his parties.
The family moves to a new home. It’s the only house in an area with no other houses around it. They have two servants, Lars and Maria. Bruno is sad because he misses Berlin, his old home, but then he meets Pavel one day while playing on a tire swing outside. Pavel tells him that they are living near Auschwitz concentration camp, which has thousands of people wearing striped pajamas (the clothes Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany).
Bruno is settling into his new home at Out-With. He doesn’t like the soldier who hangs around there, and he thinks that the guy’s girlfriend, Gretel, has a crush on him. The soldier beats up Pavel one day for spilling wine, which upsets everyone. Bruno gets lessons from a history teacher named Herr Liszt about why his family was sent to Out-With in the first place. Gretel becomes very interested in politics and news events by tracking them with pushpins on maps she puts on her wall.
Bruno misses exploring, and he finds a way to get around the fence by walking along it. He meets Shmuel, who’s also on the other side of the fence. Shmuel tells him that he was taken from his home in Poland to Auschwitz because he is Jewish. Bruno struggles to understand what life is like for Shmuel and how this can happen in Poland; however, he does as requested and brings food over the fence for Shmuel.
Bruno becomes more comfortable at Out-With as he builds a friendship with Shmuel. One day, Lieutenant Kotler brings Shmuel inside the house to clean glasses for his father’s collection. Bruno gives him some chicken that he was saving and they’re caught by Kotler. He asks if Bruno is friends with Shmuel and beats him when he says yes. Later, it turns out that Kotler has been transferred away from Out-With because of his own family history—he had fled Germany in 1938 at the beginning of World War II.
Eventually, Bruno’s mother convinces his father to move back to Berlin where they lived before. He agrees but will stay at Out-With because of work and the Fury. This saddens Bruno, who is going to miss Shmuel. They agree that the next day he’ll dress up in striped pajamas and explore Shmuel’s side of the camp with him so they can look for his father together.
The next day, Bruno dresses up in pajamas Shmuel has brought him and climbs under the fence. Inside he finds people who are sick and thin. Soldiers yell at them, but Bruno is scared so he wants to leave. However, Shmuel asks him to help find his father first. They look for a while without finding anything before the soldiers round everyone up for a march outside of camp. The boys comply because they’re afraid that if they don’t go with everyone else then something bad will happen to them. So they end up in a dark room together holding hands as the soldiers shut their doors and everything goes dark inside it.
