A POIGNANT REMINDER

It’s now nine years since the phrase 9/11 took on a whole new meaning right across the world, commemorative services were held at various locations in the US, but I haven’t caught the news to see if the minister in the US threatening to burn copies of The Koran actually went through with such a heinous act. Into day 6 of the crook back so I rested for a while and watched a movie which brutally brought home the sheer madness of discrimination, bigotry and the acceptance of the wilful genocide of a race of people other than one’s own.

I don’t usually watch a movie before reading the book, but The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, based on the book by John Boyne, would have to be one of the most potent portrayals of the Holocaust of World War 2 I’ve seen. You don’t witness the starvation, humiliation, exploitation and extermination of the Jews within the concentration camps, but through the eyes of an innocent eight year old boy whose father’s promotion in the German army brings him to the position of camp commandant, the unfolding horrors behind the barbed wire fence gradually become apparent.

Young Bruno’s secret explorations bring him into contact with Shmuel, a Jewish boy whose only solace is hiding in a corner of the camp where he is out of sight, and their developing friendship as well as the gradual awareness of Bruno’s mother to what is really happening in the camp, portray how terror and fear can fuel a relentless machine which takes on its own momentum to tragic ends.

Not on the grand scale of Schindler’s List or Private Ryan or other war movies depicting graphic scenes, the simplicity of this film brings it down to a personal level, the impact of unfolding events on one family, how moral choices, following orders, and the fear of not following them, have catastrophic consequences.

Whatever war zone you might want to consider, whatever your opinion of who is in the right and who is in the wrong, each street battle, each suicide bomber who creates carnage, each terrorist act which brings its own death toll, each missile unleashed or bomb dropped, is very personal.

Countless war movies have been made over the decades, many depicting the inhumanity of the concentration camps, but as time passes and the impact of what happened more than sixty years ago starts to fade for the younger generations, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a must see if for nothing else than their education. Unfortunately, the only thing we seem to learn from history, is that we don’t learn from history, and those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

There are peacekeepers deployed in many parts of the world, but of even more urgency is the need for real peacemakers.