The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas.

[in_excelsis_dea]

I knew nothing about this movie except that it was based on a book and that it involved a boy in WWII making friends with a little boy in a concentration camp and passing him food. This info was all thanks to 50bookchallenge and I figured that after watching the movie I'd read the book.

But now?

I don't want to spoil the movie, but oh God at the ending.

Comments

[moonspinner]

He died, didn't he? [sadface]

[lily_shrike]

Worse.

I won't see this movie because it's too hard for me, as a third generation survivor (grandchild of holocaust survivors). I can't see or read things like this without picturing every unnamed extra as a great-uncle, cousin, or great grandparent.

I was able to read Night by Elie Wiesel just fine when I was a child, but my attempt to reread it as an adult utterly failed, as in the space of a single paragraph I went from dry-eyed to crying so hard I couldn't see the page. I gave up at page 7.

[astaraelweeper]

That's exactly how Au Revoir Les Enfants hit me. Which is a French movie, also about children and Nazis. You should find it, if you can.

[alissa64]

Although all these books and movies never turn out well in the end, and cause more sadness than happiness, I think they're important, lest we forget how absolutely terrible it really was.

[lily_shrike]

Absofuckinglutely. Can you please inform my former flatmate that it is not appropriate to put up a picture of Goebbels screaming "Welcome" on his door when he lives in Germany, much less when his flatmate is the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. Because I think he's kinda forgotten the horror of the thing.

[stormqueen280]

I read the book, but haven't read the movie yet. I had the chance to watch it last month, but i refused because I wanted to read the book first. I always read the books first, you know.

[lipsofpoison]

I had the exact same reaction. I just stared in shock.