The theme of man’s inhumanity to man has been explored in many films and texts throughout history. This theme is evident in the film, The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, directed by Mark Herman, the poem The Ballad of Birmingham, written by Dudley Randall, the poem Strange Fruit, written by Abel Meeropol and the novel The Book Thief, written by Markus Zusak.
The film, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, explores the theme of man’s inhumanity to man, and is seen by the terrible actions of the Nazis against the Jews. Hitler and the Nazis believed fully in anti-Semitism. Hitler, the Führer, dreamed of Germany conquering all, and being a country where only Germans or people that belonged to the “perfect” Aryan race (blond haired and blue-eyed) could live in. Not only did he want to annihilate all Jews, he also wanted to “cleanse” Germany of the mentally and physically disabled, homosexuals, Gypsies etc, because they were seen as…show more content… Evidence of Hitler and the Nazis’ atrocity in the film is when the two young eight year old boys Bruno, a German and son of a Nazi Commandant, and Shmuel, a Jewish boy from the concentration camp not far from Bruno’s house in Auschwitz, died together in the gas chamber at the concentration camp. Bruno and Shmuel did not deserve such a cruel ending to their lives - they were innocent and oblivious children who lived during a war created by adults and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We see their innocence when Bruno said to Shmuel “We’re not supposed to be friends, you and me. We’re meant to be enemies. Did you know that?” All Bruno and Shmuel desired was a friendship that was forbidden between the two different sides of the war.