Year 12 English 2B

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas A novel by John Boyne (published by Random House in 2006) The movie first opened in cinemas on April 23 rd 2009 It is considered a fable, or a short moral story

Fable A story about mythical or supernatural beings or events A short moral story (often with animal characters) A deliberately false or improbable account

Themes Exploring an innocent perspective The essence of friendship Acts of humanity Understanding obedience and conformity Exploring prejudice and discrimination

World War 2 Before reading the novel it is essential that you have an understanding of the events of World War 2 World War 2, also known as the Second World War, was a war fought from 1939 to 1945 in Europe and, during much of the 1930s and 1940s, in Asia. The war in Europe began in earnest on September 1, 1939 with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, and concluded on September 2, 1945, with the official surrender of the last Axis nation, Japan. It was the largest armed conflict in history, spanning the entire world and involving more countries than any other war, as well as introducing powerful new weapons, culminating in the first use of nuclear weapons.

Adolph Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party commonly known as the Nazi Party. Adolf Hitler announced on many occasions the "annihilation of the Jews" living in the territory under his control. In his mind, murdering millions of Jews could only be accomplished under the confusion of war - from the beginning he was planning a war that would engulf Europe. World War 2 caused the greatest loss of life and material destruction of any war in history, killing twenty-five million military personnel and thirty million civilians. Hitler's first written utterance on political questions dating from this period emphasized that what he called "the anti-Semitism of reason" must lead "to the systematic combating and elimination of Jewish privileges. Its ultimate goal must implacably be the total removal of the Jews." Approximately 11 million people were killed because of Hitler's genocidal policy and his Nazi Regime led to the annihilation of more than six million Jews during the Holocaust.

Anti-Semitism Anti-Semitism (also spelled anti-Semitism or anti-Semitism) is prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, and/or religion. In its extreme form, it "attributes to the Jews an exceptional position among all other civilizations, defames them as an inferior group and denies their being part of the nation[s]" in which they reside. A person who practices anti-Semitism is called an "anti-Semite."

Holocaust The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁ λόκαυστος [holókaustos]: hólos, "whole" and kaustós, "burnt“], also known as The Shoah (Hebrew). It was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany.

The legal definition of genocide Excerpt from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide "Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Holocaust The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioural grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

The Holocaust In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthanasia Program.

In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Increasingly in the years before the outbreak of war, SS and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labour camps for Jews during the war years.

Concentration Camps Were prisons used without regard to accepted norms of arrest and detention. They were an essential part of Nazi systematic oppression. Initially ( ), they were used primarily for political prisoners. Later ( ), concentration camps were expanded and non-political prisoners including Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and Poles were also incarcerated. In the last period of the Nazi regime ( ), prisoners of concentration camps were forced to work in the armament industry, as more and more Germans were fighting in the war. Living conditions varied considerably from camp to camp and over time. The worst conditions took place from , especially after the war broke out. Death, disease, starvation, crowded and unsanitary conditions, and torture were a daily part of concentration camps.

Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau became the killing centre where the largest numbers of European Jews were killed during the Holocaust. After an experimental gassing there in September 1941 of 850 malnourished and ill prisoners, mass murder became a daily routine. By mid 1942, mass gassing of Jews using Zyklon-B began at Auschwitz, where extermination was conducted on an industrial scale with some estimates running as high as three million persons eventually killed through gassing, starvation, disease, shooting, and burning 9 out of 10 were Jews. In addition, Gypsies, Soviet POWs, and prisoners of all nationalities died in the gas chambers. Between May 14 and July 8,1944, 437,402 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in 148 trains. This was probably the largest single mass deportation during the Holocaust. At Auschwitz children were often killed upon arrival. Children born in the camp were generally killed on the spot. Near the end of the war, in order to cut expenses and save gas, cost-accountant considerations led to an order to place living children directly into the ovens or throw them into open burning pits.