Bruno: "What have you done?" Shmuel: "I'm a Jew"

Rating: 10/10 (11 November 2010)

Guests and friends celebrate 1940 in a berlinhouse the promotion of an SS officer. He and his family move to the place where his 'important work' is. His young son Bruno is against the move but children must accept. Looking out of the window of his room he sees beyond the garden and the forest the 'farm' with its smelling smoke from the chimney. In La Vie est Belle it is the father who  in this movie we see what Bruno and his friend Shmuel, the boy in 'stripped pyjamas', sees. Pavel, also dressed in stripped pyjamas, tells Bruno, taking care of his wounded knee, that he was a doctor before and now a kitchen help. We understand: Auschwitz. Why again holocaust? Here it is different. Seen with the innocent mind of a 8-year-old boy. Beyond the fence of time of which we are part of (the small-scale genocide, wars by lies, the crash that stripped people of their savings, their pensions, their homes, their jobs, their hopes of providing for their families). Shmuel is Bruno's friend: "There is such a thing as a nice Jew though, isn't there" he asks and the teacher Herr Liszt answers: "I think, Bruno, if you ever found a nice Jew, you would be the best explorer in the world." Bruno asks Shmuel: "What have you done?" and Shmuel answers: "I am a Jew" – their fathers the mirror: Bruno's father for what he 'does' (courtsentenced after the war for prison – Shmuel's father for what he is, whatever he answers, he is still what he is. As Herr Liszt explains: "The Jew here means the entire Jewish race. If it had been just one man, I'm sure something would've been done about him." S Zizek describes with the help of John McCumbers 'The Company of Words': (dirty, intricate, greedy) – Jew. The Jew is (dirty, intricate, greedy) / JEW. To me said at work 2008: One German is a German (ex Bruno, but not! Shmuel?), two Germans are Nazis, three Germans claim 'Lebensraum'. SS officer Aldorfer in Il Portiere di Notte to his friends: "I have a reason for working at night. It's the light. I have a sense of shame in the light". Children think different as long adults are not around. Bruno lets down his new friend: "Lets go and find your dad. I wish I could helped you find your dad. I really want to make up for having you down like I did. That would have done it, wouldn't it? Helping you find your dad". Bruno hears what Herr Liszt says, senses the importance of fathers work, sees his looking-away-mother, having a break down when reality is undeniable... . As Aldorfer is Hanna in The Reader unready for life after release, unable to cope with her shame in daylight. The same for the boy, the student and adult 'Jungchen', passed long ago the point-of-no-return, surviving the daily life the shame by denial. The judge answers Hannas question "What would you have done" with: one should not put himself in such a position. She did not! Whenever offered promotion she moved on, ashamed to explain why. She had to choose what happens in Sophy's Choice, they never saw the trap (which Sara avoids in Worlds Apart: neither love or religion but she herself. The same for the boy Bruno. It was his idea to find Shmuels father, do it as a 'secret mission'. Childthinking, just do it. For us others: shame, guilt, excuses and the stand-in Weisse-Rose-students ('as our better part') who saw and did not look away. So good and easy that others do what I should do and not do. The author says in his letter that those inside know how it was which we outside only have a fantasy of. Only a child can come a little nearer (with what Wim Wender means in Himmel ueber Berlin, communicating with the child within, able to listen to the angel beside). But still today, the letter of the author, exists the Bruno-Shmuel-fence. And valid what is said in The Reader: "People ask all the time what I have learned in the camps. They where not therapy. Do you believe it was a university? We where not there to learn something. What do you want? Forgiveness for her (Hanna). To feel better yourself? Go to theater if you want catharsis, go to literature, don't go to the camps. Nothing comes out from the camp. Nothing". When seeing the inside of the farm, Bruno remembers that supper waits with roast biff. But too late: "It's a shower", both holding tightly hands.