Art Spiegelman shown with a blow-up of his graphic novel \u201cMaus.\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
For the first decade of his book\u2019s release, Boyne would frequently receive invites to speak at Jewish community centers and Holocaust museums. He met with survivors who shared their stories with him.<\/p>\n
Over the years, more research has been published about the book\u2019s popularity in the classroom, which has led to more scrutiny of its factual inaccuracies. Other authors, Holocaust researchers and some educators have come out forcefully against the book\u2019s use in the classroom. At the same time, Boyne said, his invitations to Jewish venues dried up.<\/p>\n
The author has also been known to exacerbate the issue by sparring with his critics, even when they are respected institutions. Most infamously, in 2020, Boyne got into a Twitter feud with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, which said his Auschwitz-set book \u201cshould be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches about the history of the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n
The back-and-forth was provoked after Boyne criticized what he saw as the crassness of more recent Holocaust novels, such as \u201cThe Tattooist of Auschwitz\u201d by Heather Morris. Reflecting on the spat, Boyne said of the Auschwitz memorial, \u201cI hope that they do understand that, whether my book is a masterpiece or a travesty, that I came at it with the very best intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boyne conceived of the sequel shortly after finishing \u201cStriped Pajamas.\u201d It follows Bruno\u2019s older sister Gretel as she lives in hiding after the war and successfully conceals her Nazi upbringing all the way into the present day. A preteen during the Holocaust, Gretel becomes gradually more aware of its horrors after seeing newspaper articles and documentaries and encountering former Resistance members and Jewish descendants of survivors (including one, David, who becomes her lover without knowing her true background).<\/p>\n
Unlike \u201cStriped Pajamas,\u201d \u201cAll the Broken Places\u201d is intended for adults. It\u2019s filled with sex, violence, suicide attempts and bad language \u2014 and also some of the details of the Holocaust that were omitted from the first book. It mentions the Sobibor death camp by name, for example, and also takes the time to correct Bruno\u2019s childish assumptions about the death camps being a \u201cfarm.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it tells the story from the perspective of a German who was directly implicated in the Holocaust. Throughout, Gretel reflects on her complicity in the Nazi regime, and her self-interest in hiding from authorities in the following years rather than trying to bring people like her father to justice. Missing from the book is any serious discussion of antisemitism as an ideology, and to what extent Gretel ascribes to it \u2014 though there is plenty of hand-wringing over postwar anti-German sentiment. In one shocking moment, a former S.S. lieutenant in hiding presents Gretel with a pair of Hitler\u2019s eyeglasses and urges her to try them on; she is terrified to discover that this excites her.<\/p>\n
The book\u2019s reception has been mixed. While praised by publications including Kirkus Reviews (\u201ca complex, thoughtful character study\u201d) and the Guardian (\u201ca defense of literature\u2019s need to shine a light on the darkest aspects of human nature\u201d), the New Statesman took Boyne to task for writing an \u201cimmoral\u201d and \u201cshameless sequel\u201d that further erodes the \u201cJewishness\u201d of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n
At the behest of his publisher, Boyne has included an author\u2019s note with \u201cAll The Broken Places\u201d alluding to criticisms of \u201cStriped Pajamas.\u201d \u201cWriting about the Holocaust is a fraught business and any novelist approaching it takes on an enormous burden of responsibility,\u201d he tells the reader. \u201cThe story of every person who died in the Holocaust is one that is worth telling. I believe that Gretel\u2019s story is also worth telling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, \u201cStriped Pajamas\u201d has its Jewish defenders. One, the 24-year-old composer Noah Max, is behind a new opera adaptation of the book, to be titled \u201cA Child in Striped Pyjamas.\u201d It will debut in London in January; a recent story by the U.K. Jewish Chronicle helped convince the film\u2019s rights holder Miramax to waive a $1 million licensing fee for the project.<\/p>\n
A promotional graphic for “A Child in Striped Pyjamas,” a new opera that bows at the Cockpit Theatre in London, England in January. (\u00a9Noah Max)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
A great-grandson of Jews who fled Vienna when the Nazis arrived, Max told JTA he\u2019d initially read the book \u201cyears before I was capable of absorbing testimony,\u201d and that it inspired him to seek out actual survivor testimonies and to begin composing the opera at the age of 19. He compared its message to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks\u2019 writings on moral relativism.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, the book motivated me to write an opera about the Shoah and integrate Holocaust education into my music,\u201d Max said. \u201cAny book capable of that is worthy of attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Max\u2019s passion for \u201cStriped Pajamas\u201d inspired at least one Holocaust group to change its mind about its educational merits. The Holocaust Educational Trust, a London-based group that advocates British educators on how to teach the Holocaust, had as recently as 2020 declared that \u201cwe advise against using\u201d the book in the classroom.<\/p>\n
But following what Max described as \u201crichly fulfilling conversations\u201d about \u201cthe story\u2019s symbolic and artistic worth,\u201d the trust fully endorsed the opera and, he said, has begun to rethink its view of the book. (The group did not respond to a JTA request for comment.)<\/p>\n
Even with 16 years of hindsight and the chance to rethink his bestseller, Boyne said he wouldn\u2019t change anything. Reflecting on his youthful audience, he said, \u201cIf they weren\u2019t reading \u2018Striped Pajamas,\u2019 it\u2019s more likely they would be reading something that has no relevance to this subject at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
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