<P> Ed Wright, writing in The Age of Melbourne, calls the novel "a touching tale of an odd friendship between two boys in horrendous circumstances and a reminder of man's capacity for inhumanity ." He felt that "Bruno's friendship with Shmuel is rendered with neat awareness of the paradoxes between children's naive egocentricity, their innate concept of fairness, familial loyalty and obliviousness to the social conventions of discrimination ." He concludes by observing that "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is subtitled A Fable and, as in other modern fables such as Antoine de St Exupery's The Little Prince, Boyne uses Bruno to reveal the flaws in an adult world ." </P> <P> A.O. Scott, writing in The New York Times, questioned the author and publisher's choice to intentionally keep the Holocaust setting of the book vague in both the dust jacket summary and the early portion of the novel, writing: "Boyne's reluctance to say as much can certainly be defended, not least on the grounds that the characters in a story about the Holocaust are themselves most likely unaware of the scale and historical importance of their experiences . To recreate those experiences faithfully might require undoing some of the readers' preconceptions ." However Scott felt this undermined the work, saying: "A young reader who knows little or nothing about the mass murder of European Jews by the Nazis will not know much more after reading "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," while one who has read other books on the topic--Jerry Spinelli's "Milkweed," say, or Anne Frank's diary--may be irritated by the book's evasions and euphemisms . There is something awkward about the way Boyne manages to disguise, and then to disclose, the historical context ." Scott concludes that "To mold the Holocaust into an allegory, as Boyne does here with perfectly benign intent, is to step away from its reality ." </P> <P> Rabbi Benjamin Blech offered a historical criticism, contending that the premise of the book and subsequent film--that there could be a child of Shmuel's age in Auschwitz--was impossible, writing of the book: "Note to the reader: There were no 9 - year - old Jewish boys in Auschwitz--the Nazis immediately gassed those not old enough to work ." Rabbi Blech affirmed the opinion of a Holocaust survivor friend that the book is "not just a lie and not just a fairytale, but a profanation". Blech acknowledges the objection that a "fable" need not be factually accurate; he counters that the book trivializes the conditions in and around the death camps and perpetuates the "myth that those (...) not directly involved can claim innocence", and thus undermines its moral authority . Students who read it, he warns, may believe the camps "weren't that bad" if a boy could conduct a clandestine friendship with a Jewish captive of the same age, unaware of "the constant presence of death". </P> <P> Holocaust scholar Henry Gonashk rebuts Blech's historical contention in his book "Hollywood and the Holocaust", writing that "The rabbi found implausible Shmuel's very existence in the camp," but stating that "Blech is factually incorrect . In fact, there were male (though apparently not female) children at Auschwitz . In 1944, for example, according to the Nazis' meticulous records, there were 619 male children at the camp, ranging in age from one month to fourteen years old . Some of the boys sere employed by the Nazis as camp messengers, while others were simply kept around as mascots and curiosities . Probably some of these children were sexually abused by the guards . Of course, thousands of other children at Auschwitz (including all the girls who arrived at the camp) were gassed ." </P>

Characters in the boy in the striped pajamas novel