Some deeper thoughts today...
Chandler
and I watched “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” on Netflix
for an at-home Friday night date. Wow was that a thought-provoking and
moving movie.
Chandler had seen it before, and he thought I should see it. Now I think
everyone should see it.
It’s
about a concentration camp under Nazi Germany. But instead of being
told from the perspective of those in the camp it was told from the
perspective of a young
8 year-old boy named Bruno whose father was one of the higher-ups in the
Nazi military. As a young boy of privilege, whose dad was a very
important man, he wasn’t really told what his father did. Even his
mother didn’t really know. They had to move near a concentration
camp that his father was basically in charge of and the natural explorer
in Bruno led him to explore near a “farm” where he thought the people
dressed in pajamas all day. He thought they were strange, but he didn’t
know anything about them. His curiosity was
so innocent.
In
secret, Bruno met a friend who lived on the other side of the fence at
the “farm”. His friend looked weird and had a number label on his
clothes, but he was just
like Bruno. He wanted to play. He wanted to have fun. He didn’t really
know what was going on either. He just knew that some of his family was
sent to another work camp and hospital and they never came back.
I
won’t give away the end of the movie, because you should watch it. But
it was very emotional and tearful at the end. It got Chandler and I
thinking and aching for
the real suffering people have gone through at the hand
of others. It made us feel so blessed to be sitting on a couch in a warm
apartment in our sweats, while other people struggle to find something
to eat. We wondered what we could do to bless
the lives of others.
It
got me thinking… Here were two boys the same age, with similar
interests, but because one was deemed to be part of the “enemy” he had
the sad lot to live in the
degrading and diminishing death camp while the other boy had everything
he needed and wanted. What made these two boys different? Nothing
really. It was just the label of someone else that caused the Jews’
convictions to turn to their detriment.
I
don’t know if things like this still happen today – if they do that is
awful – just like it was awful back then. But I have been thinking.
Maybe I can’t stop things
of this gruesome magnitude, but I can recognize smaller acts of bullying
or degrading that happen around me. I can prevent bickering and
belittling of others. I can show support and love to others even if
their views are different than mine. I
have my own beliefs and I am strong in my convictions, but if they
conflict with others that is no reason to treat them with less love and
human kindness. I can keep others
as my friends, and not label them as my enemies just because there is a
barrier separating us. We can find similarities through that barrier,
just like those boys were friends despite the electric fence separating
them.
What
got me the most emotional was the fact that these boys were innocent
children. They were in their individual circumstances because of the
wrong actions of others.
And just because one boy had unfortunate circumstances he lost the
opportunity to be a young boy like he should be. We are all someone’s
child. We all deserve the same respect and love from each other. In a
sense, we all have influence over ‘a boy in striped
pajamas’. Whether we have children of our own or not, everyone is
someone’s child.
Whether
it is my boy or someone else’s boy in the striped pajamas it doesn’t
matter. We should treat each other with equal respect. In some way every one
of us has a boy in the striped pajamas that we care about, and we would all hope that we
could be treated with equal kindness.
