Unit 2: Selection Vocabulary 2

As if to prove something that Bruno already knew, he held his hand out and Bruno couldn’t help but notice that it was like the hand of the pretend skeleton that Herr Liszt had brought with him one day when they were studying human anatomy.

"I'd never noticed before,” he said in a disbelieving voice, almost to himself.

Not wanting to look at Shmuel’s hand any longer, Bruno turned round and opened the refrigerator, rooting about inside it for something to eat.

There was half a stuffed chicken left over from lunch time, and Bruno’s eyes sparkled in delight for there were very few things in life that he enjoyed more than cold chicken with sage and onion stuffing.

Every history teacher knows that making students believe that history is relevant to their lives is Challenge Number 1.

By approaching the Holocaust through the eyes of two nine-year-old boys, the book provides a unique perspective on this dark and horrible chapter in history.

Film critic Peter Rainer notes in his online movie review for the Christian Science Monitor, “The great conundrum of the Holocaust is that it was perpetrated by human beings, not monsters..."

By manipulating the historical realities of the Holocaust for the sake of a good story, Boyne runs the risk of giving readers a distorted view of the Holocaust.

That is, before it is used in a history classroom, historical fiction should be checked for bias, for anachronistic voice and views, and for shying away from honest presentation of the period.

Thus the very premise of the story is, in Cesarani’s words, “utterly implausible.” In his scathing review of the book, Cesarani explains why the implausibility matters: “Should this matter if the book is a ‘fable’ which is presumably intended by its author to warn against the evils of prejudice? Yes. Because there are people at large who contest whether the systematic mass murder of the Jews occurred” (Cesarani).

In school, Sophie felt alienated because she could not confide in a classmate or teacher.

The threat worked: Worried now, Sophie buckled and studied hard to pass the Abitur, a difficult graduation test, in order to receive her diploma.

Sophie’s frustration during high school stemmed from the Nazis’ new standardized school curriculum. It was important to Adolf Hitler that all Germans shared the same outlook on the world.

They threw out old textbooks and implemented new ones.

Dressed in full uniform, entire Hitler Youth squads—as many as one hundred boys—showed up at classroom doors to intimidate teachers who did not espouse the Nazi worldview.