<P> The Holocaust drama relates the horror of a World War II Nazi extermination camp through the eyes of two 8 - year - old boys; Bruno (Asa Butterfield), the son of the camp's Nazi commandant, and Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a Jewish inmate . The film was criticised for what some felt is a distorted view of the Auschwitz experience . </P> <P> The film opens with the quote, "Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows," by John Betjeman . A young boy named Bruno lives with his family in Berlin, in Nazi Germany during the period of the Holocaust . He learns that his father Ralf has been promoted, due to which their family, including Bruno's mother Elsa and sister Gretel, relocate to the countryside . Bruno hates his new home as there is no one to play with and very little to explore . After commenting that he has spotted people working on what he thinks is a farm in the distance (but, unbeknownst to the innocent Bruno, is actually a concentration camp), he is also forbidden from playing in the back garden . </P> <P> Bruno and Gretel get a private tutor, Herr Liszt, who pushes an agenda of antisemitism and nationalist propaganda . As a result, Gretel becomes extremely fanatical in her support for the Third Reich, to the point of covering her bedroom wall with Nazi propaganda posters and portraits of Adolf Hitler . Bruno is confused as the Jews he has seen, in particular the family's Jewish servant Pavel, do not resemble the caricatures in Liszt's teachings . </P> <P> One day, Bruno disobeys his parents and sneaks off into the woods, eventually arriving at an electric barbed wire fence surrounding a camp . He befriends a boy his own age named Shmuel . The pair's lack of knowledge on the true nature of the camp is revealed: Bruno thinks that the striped uniforms that Shmuel, Pavel, and the other prisoners wear are pyjamas and Shmuel believes his grandparents died from an illness during their journey to the camp . Bruno starts meeting Shmuel regularly, sneaking him food and playing board games with him . He eventually learns that Shmuel is a Jew and was brought to the camp with his father and mother . </P>

What is the boy in the striped pyjamas about