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The sequel to the Holocaust novel ‘Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ is here. Its author has no regrets.
(JTA) – At one point in John Boyne’s new novel “All The Broken Places,” a 91-year-old German woman recalls, for the first time, her encounter with a young Jewish boy in the Auschwitz death camp 80 years prior.
“I found him in the warehouse one day. Where they kept all the striped pajamas,” she says.
The woman, Gretel, quickly realizes her mistake: that “this was a phrase peculiar to my brother and me.” She clarifies that she is referring to “the uniforms. … You know the ones I mean.”
Boyne’s readers are, in fact, likely to know what Gretel means, as “All The Broken Places” is a sequel to Boyne’s 2006 international bestseller “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” At a time when other Holocaust books intended for young readers have been challenged or removed from some American schools, the enduring popularity of “Striped Pajamas” has conjured up love and loathing in equal measure for its depiction of Nazi and Jewish youths during the Holocaust. It has sold 11 million copies, appeared in 58 languages and in major motion picture form, and been the only assigned reading about Jews or the Holocaust for countless schoolchildren, mostly in Britain. Yet Holocaust scholars have warned against it, panning it as inaccurate and trafficking in dangerous stereotypes about Jewish weakness.
Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from his Dublin home on Tuesday, the day “All the Broken Places” hit U.S. shelves, Boyne said he hoped readers would take his new book on its own terms — as a more sophisticated meditation on guilt, culpability and evil, for an adult audience rather than children this time. But he also wants to defend the original work that made him famous.
“I do feel it’s a positive contribution to the world and to Holocaust studies,” said Boyne, who estimates that he has personally spoken to between 500 and 600 schools about “Striped Pajamas.”
Not everyone agrees. A 2016 study published by the Centre for Holocaust Education, a British organization housed at University College London, found that 35% of British teachers used his book in their Holocaust lesson plans, and that 85% of students who had consumed any kind of media related to the Holocaust had either read the book or seen its movie adaptation.
That level of widespread familiarity with the book led many students to inaccurate conclusions about the Holocaust, such as that the Nazis were “victims too” and that most Germans were unaware of the horrors being visited upon the Jewish people, the study found.
A promotional image from the 2008 film adaptation of “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” (Miramax)
As overall awareness of the Holocaust has decreased among young people especially, Boyne’s novel has become a casualty of its own success. Holocaust scholars in the United Kingdom and United States have decried the book, with historian David Cesarani calling it “a travesty of facts” and “a distortion of history,” and the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre in London publishing a long takedown of the book’s inaccuracies and “stereotypes.”
“With the rise in antisemitism, such as it is in this country, and that so often manifests through trivialisation, distortion and denial of the Holocaust, this book could potentially do more harm than good,” Centre for Holocaust Education researcher Ruth-Anne Lenga concluded at the end of her 2016 study.
Boyne came to the Holocaust as subject matter purely on his own, having never been taught about the history growing up in Ireland. (He attended a Catholic school, where, as he has recounted publicly, he was physically and sexually abused by his teachers.) Reading Elie Wiesel’s “Night” as a teenager, Boyne said, “made me want to understand more.”
He would read many more Holocaust books during his twenties, from Primo Levi to Anne Frank to “Sophie’s Choice,” fascinated by the sheer recency of the atrocity. “How could something that seems like it should have happened, say, 1,000 years ago — because the death count is so enormous and so horrifying — how could that happen so close to the time that I’m alive in?” he thought. “And if it could, then what’s to stop it happening again?”
That fascination led to the publication, when Boyne was 33, of “Striped Pajamas,” which he’d always conceived of as a children’s story. In the book, Bruno, the 9-year-old son of a Nazi commandant, befriends Shmuel, a Jewish concentration-camp prisoner of the same age; it ends with Bruno donning the “striped pajamas” and following his friend into the gas chambers. Further driving home the fable conceit, an initial draft included a framing device of Boyne as a character reading the story to an audience of children, before an editor advised him to cut it.
During his writing process, Boyne said he was concerned with “the emotional truth of the novel” as opposed to holding to historical accuracy, and defended much of the book’s ahistorical details — such as moving the Auschwitz guards’ living quarters to outside the camp, and putting no armed guards or electric fences between Bruno and Shmuel — as creative license. A common critique of the book, that the climax encourages the reader to mourn the death of Bruno over that of Shmuel and the other Jews in the camps, makes no sense to Boyne: “I struggle to understand somebody who would reach the end of that book and only feel sympathy for Bruno. I think then if somebody does, I think that says more, frankly, about their antisemitism than anything else.”
He also justified his decisions by reasoning that a novel like his shouldn’t be the basis for Holocaust instruction.
“I don’t think that it’s my responsibility, as a novelist who didn’t write a school book, to justify its use in education when I never asked for that to happen,” he said. “If [teachers] make the choice to use a novel in their classrooms, it’s their responsibility to make sure the children know that there is a difference between what happens in this novel and what happened in real life.”
Boyne added that he was “appalled” by a recent JTA report about a Tennessee school district removing Art Spiegelman’s graphic Holocaust memoir “Maus” from its curriculum. If teachers are choosing between teaching the two books, he said, “‘Maus’ is better, no question about that. And a much more important book.” (Earlier this year, Spiegelman himself took a swipe at “Striped Pajamas” by telling a Tennessee audience that no schools should read Boyne’s novel because “that guy didn’t do any research whatsoever.”)
“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” John Boyne’s 2006 bestseller, has been critiqued for the way it presented the Holocaust to children. (Illustration by Grace Yagel)
For the first decade of his book’s 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.
Over the years, more research has been published about the book’s 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’s use in the classroom. At the same time, Boyne said, his invitations to Jewish venues dried up.
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 “should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches about the history of the Holocaust.”
The back-and-forth was provoked after Boyne criticized what he saw as the crassness of more recent Holocaust novels, such as “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” by Heather Morris. Reflecting on the spat, Boyne said of the Auschwitz memorial, “I 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.”
Boyne conceived of the sequel shortly after finishing “Striped Pajamas.” It follows Bruno’s 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).
Unlike “Striped Pajamas,” “All the Broken Places” is intended for adults. It’s filled with sex, violence, suicide attempts and bad language — 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’s childish assumptions about the death camps being a “farm.”
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 — 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’s eyeglasses and urges her to try them on; she is terrified to discover that this excites her.
The book’s reception has been mixed. While praised by publications including Kirkus Reviews (“a complex, thoughtful character study”) and the Guardian (“a defense of literature’s need to shine a light on the darkest aspects of human nature”), the New Statesman took Boyne to task for writing an “immoral” and “shameless sequel” that further erodes the “Jewishness” of the Holocaust.
At the behest of his publisher, Boyne has included an author’s note with “All The Broken Places” alluding to criticisms of “Striped Pajamas.” “Writing about the Holocaust is a fraught business and any novelist approaching it takes on an enormous burden of responsibility,” he tells the reader. “The story of every person who died in the Holocaust is one that is worth telling. I believe that Gretel’s story is also worth telling.”
Still, “Striped Pajamas” has its Jewish defenders. One, the 24-year-old composer Noah Max, is behind a new opera adaptation of the book, to be titled “The Child in the Striped Pyjamas.” It will debut in London in January; a recent story by the U.K. Jewish Chronicle helped convince the film’s rights holder Miramax to waive a $1 million licensing fee for the project.
A great-grandson of Jews who fled Vienna when the Nazis arrived, Max told JTA he’d initially read the book “years before I was capable of absorbing testimony,” 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’ writings on moral relativism.
“Ultimately, the book motivated me to write an opera about the Shoah and integrate Holocaust education into my music,” Max said. “Any book capable of that is worthy of attention.”
Composer Noah Max (center) rehearses for his upcoming opera adaptation of “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” to premiere in January 2023. (Courtesy of Noah Max)
Max’s passion for “Striped Pajamas” 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 “we advise against using” the book in the classroom.
But following what Max described as “richly fulfilling conversations” about “the story’s symbolic and artistic worth,” 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.)
Even with 16 years of hindsight and the chance to rethink his bestseller, Boyne said he wouldn’t change anything. Reflecting on his youthful audience, he said, “If they weren’t reading ‘Striped Pajamas,’ it’s more likely they would be reading something that has no relevance to this subject at all.”
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Pro-Hamas Group Palestine Action’s Appeal Over UK Ban Begins
Protesters from “Palestine Action” demonstrate on the roof of Guardtech Group in Brandon, Suffolk, Britain, July 1, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Chris Radburn
The British government’s ban on the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas campaign group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization amounted to an authoritarian restriction on protest, lawyers representing a co-founder seeking to overturn the ban argued on Wednesday.
Palestine Action was proscribed in July, putting it on a par with Islamic State or al Qaeda and making it a crime to be a member, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Since then, more than 2,000 people have been arrested for holding signs in support of the group.
The group had increasingly targeted Israel-linked defense companies in Britain with “direct action,” often blocking entrances, or spraying red paint, particularly focusing on Israel’s largest defense firm Elbit Systems.
Britain’s Home Office [interior ministry] argues the group‘s escalating actions, culminating in a June break-in at the RAF Brize Norton air base when activists damaged two planes, amount to terrorism.
But lawyers representing Huda Ammori, who co-founded Palestine Action in 2020, say the move flies in the face of Britain’s long history of direct action protests and is “so extreme as to render the UK an international outlier.”
It was the first time a “direct action, civil disobedience organization that does not advocate for violence” had been proscribed as terrorist, Ammori’s lawyer Raza Husain told London’s High Court.
He compared the response to the group to that of other civil disobedience campaigns, such as Rosa Parks, the late US civil rights figure who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in 1955, and the suffragette movement which campaigned for women’s right to vote in the early 20th century.
GROUP‘S ACTIONS ESCALATED AMID WAR IN GAZA
Lawyers representing the Home Office said in court filings that the right to freedom of expression does not protect “speech and activity in support of a proscribed organization that commits serious property damage.”
Palestine Action has frequently targeted defense companies. It stepped up its actions during the Gaza war, with six members arrested on suspicion of plotting to disrupt the London Stock Exchange in January 2024.
Six people went on trial last week for aggravated burglary, criminal damage, and violent disorder over a raid on Elbit, with one charged with causing grievous bodily harm by hitting a police officer with a sledgehammer. They deny the charges.
Ammori’s lawyers say the ban has led to pro-Palestinian protesters being questioned by police at demonstrations without expressing support for Palestine Action.
The British government argues proscription only prevents support for Palestine Action and has not prevented people from protesting “in favor of the Palestinian people or against Israel’s actions in Gaza.”
The case is due to conclude next week, with a ruling at a later date.
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Tucker Carlson’s Latest Attack on Jews Is His Worst Yet
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024, during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
Tucker Carlson has said some ugly things over the years, but even by his standards, last week was a new low.
In a monologue framed as a warning — because demagogues often pretend they’re just “warning” — Carlson delivered one of the most explicit and chilling mainstream threats toward American Jews in decades.
Speaking about people like Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin, Tucker said:
Give us the money for our preferred little country, or else we’re going to denounce you … Man, those attitudes are incompatible with leadership and in fact with democracy itself. You can’t have a country of 350 million people governed by boutique goals concerns … It doesn’t work. It’s illegitimate. If you keep it up, you’re flirting with real backlash. Like a real one … Not Nick Fuentes. Like a real one. So cool it. Don’t treat people like cattle.”
“Preferred little country.”
“Boutique goals.”
“Backlash.”
“Cool it.”
This was not analysis.
This was menace.
And it came wrapped in projection so brazen it would be funny — if the history behind it weren’t so deadly.
Because while Carlson accuses American Jews of disloyalty, coercion, and anti-democratic behavior, he has spent years whitewashing, rationalizing, or outright promoting the most openly anti-American movements operating on US soil: the anti-Israel campus mobs, the “resistance” celebrations of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the organizations openly seeking the dismantling of the American “empire” itself.
Carlson has nothing to say about movements that literally burn American flags
Let’s start with what Carlson ignores — because the silence is the tell.
Over the past two-plus years, anti-Israel protesters across the country have:
- burned American flags on college campuses and in major US cities,
- praised terrorists who murdered American citizens on Oct. 7,
- chanted “Death to America,” “Glory to our martyrs,” and “Resistance is justified from Gaza to New York,”
- waved Hezbollah, Hamas, IRGC, and even Houthi flags,
- shut down airports, highways, and Federal buildings,
- declared their goal is to “dismantle the US settler colony” (SJP),
- and demanded that America “collapse so a new world can be born.”
Not once — not even once — has Tucker Carlson accused any of these groups of “dual loyalty,” “treason,” “boutique goals,” or “corrupting democracy.”
Not once has he warned them of a coming “backlash.”
Not once has he urged them to “cool it.”
It turns out his concern for “American democracy” applies only to one group: Jews who support America’s democratic ally, Israel.
Meanwhile, the pro-Israel demonstrators Carlson smears wave American flags
Attend any pro-Israel rally in America and you’ll see a sea of US flags.
Mainstream Jewish Americans — whom Carlson now accuses of “treating other Americans like cattle” — regularly:
- thank US soldiers,
- praise America’s democratic traditions,
- and celebrate the shared values between the US and Israel.
The people Carlson calls “disloyal” attend rallies that look like Fourth of July parades.
The people he ignores are waving terror flags and chanting for America’s destruction.
Is this “America First”?
Of course not.
It is not patriotism driving Carlson.
It is obsession.
And obsession of this type always has a name.
What Carlson calls “boutique interests” are simply American Jews participating in American democracy
Carlson’s rant targeting Jewish media figures like Shapiro and Levin — two men whose “crime” is advocating policies Tucker himself embraced until he discovered the profitability of being the chief podcaster of the woke-right — is as familiar as it is poisonous:
- Jews advocating for a strong US–Israel alliance = anti-democratic “boutique interests.”
- Jews engaging in politics = “corrupting democracy.”
- Jews influencing policy (like everyone else) = “flirting with backlash.”
This is indistinguishable from Charles Lindbergh’s 1941 warning that Jews were steering America toward disaster and would deserve the “backlash” that followed.
The “America First” movement Carlson imagines has always carried this rot.
He’s just comfortable saying it out loud.
Carlson accuses Jews of:
- political coercion,
- ideological dominance,
- and treating opponents like “cattle.”
But his movement features:
- Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi Carlson now rehabilitates as a kind of misunderstood populist, who openly calls for stripping Jews of civil rights.
- Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose Christian nationalism rejects pluralistic democracy.
- Pedro Gonzalez, a figure Carlson helped mainstream, was caught pushing overt antisemitic tropes about Jewish “control,” the very rhetoric his movement now feeds on.
- Influencers in Carlson’s orbit who praise Putin, the IRGC, and the Houthis — America’s enemies.
This is the camp lecturing American Jews about “loyalty”?
Carlson’s rant wasn’t just hypocritical.
It was textbook projection.
And then there’s his selective outrage about “foreign influence”
Carlson says American Jews undermine America because they support Israel — America’s only reliable democratic ally in the Middle East.
But here’s what he never mentions:
- Anti-Israel campus groups receive support from networks tied to Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood.
- Iran’s propaganda arms amplify the same talking points as the woke-right.
- Anti-Israel leaders openly praise the IRGC and Hezbollah.
- Many anti-Israel protesters literally call for America’s collapse.
Yet the only “foreign subversion” he sees … is Jews?
He sees “treason” in pro-Israel Americans.
He sees “populism” in pro-Iran activists.
Carlson himself went to Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin and give him a puff piece — and then offered the same courtesy to Iran’s “death to America” president.
Again: the silence is the tell.
Why Carlson targets Jews and not America’s real enemies
Because his movement needs a villain — one the far-right and far-left can share. And that villain — once again, as always — is the Jew.
There is no principle behind Carlson’s position. Only narrative:
- When Jews oppose Hamas → they are warmongers.
- When Jews support a strong America and strong US–Israel alliance → they are disloyal.
- When Jews engage politically → they corrupt democracy.
- When Jews defend themselves → they threaten national stability.
It’s the longest-running script in history.
Carlson just updated it for 2025 and put it on primetime.
At a time when genuine anti-American extremism is flourishing — in campus encampments, online propaganda networks, and foreign-backed organizations — Tucker Carlson has chosen to threaten the Americans waving US flags.
He has chosen to smear: Americans committed to democratic values.
He has chosen to accuse of treason: Americans whose “foreign cause” is a US ally under attack by terrorists who also kill Americans. Perhaps Tucker has forgotten how Iran’s proxies have killed literally hundreds of American service members — as they are enemies of both Israel and America.
And he has chosen to threaten a “real backlash” against: the one minority that history shows gets blamed whenever demagogues need a villain.
This is not patriotism.
It is not conservatism.
It is not “America First.”
It is the oldest hatred wearing a new mask.
And the mask isn’t slipping.
It’s off.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, antisemitism, and Jewish history and serves on the board of Herut North America.
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What Israel Can Learn From American Thanksgiving
A traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Gratitude is a deeply Jewish concept, emphasized in the Biblical text, the Talmud, Jewish law, and throughout rabbinic thought. Most significantly, gratitude is woven into the rituals of daily life, including the first statement of “modeh ani” that we recite upon waking each day as well as in the morning blessings.
This overlap between the value Judaism places on gratitude and the theme of the upcoming American holiday of Thanksgiving gives us a reason to truly recognize that day as a Jewish experience. But there is another deep connection between Judaism and Thanksgiving, one that Jews everywhere, including in Israel, should be more aware of and embrace.
Many of the values that the United States was built on, including justice, equality and freedom, stem from the Bible and Judeo-Christian tradition. This should be a reminder that here in Israel as well — the land where those ideas started — we should be more cognizant of those values as a society, especially in these challenging days as we rebuild after more than two years of war and face deep divisions among ourselves.
On Nov. 26, 1789, President George Washington proclaimed a day of public thanks, saying gratitude wasn’t just a feeling but a national duty, “acknowledging … the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
His statement reflects the influence of the Bible on the Founding Fathers’ worldview — and not simply because he referred to the Almighty. Rather, it is important to recognize that many of the values that Americans are especially grateful for on Thanksgiving — the values that allow a form of government for safety and happiness — are derived from Judeo-Christian concepts.
As outlined in his book Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, Daniel L. Dreisbach, a professor at American University, describes the Bible as the most read and most quoted book in early American political discourse. Stories and quotes from the Bible were used to justify civil resistance, examine the rights and duties of citizens, and understand the role of political authority. Early American politics and its groundbreaking democratic system can only be understood properly by understanding the role of the Bible, he writes.
The Declaration of Independence and Constitution are secular documents, but the ideas contained in them have unmistakable direct roots in values illustrated in the Bible.
Although the United States faces many challenges, and the Biblical values of justice, equality, and personal freedom are not always upheld as they should be, the ideal of these values has been front and center to the country’s success and to the opportunities it has given to millions, including my own father, my in-laws, and grandparents, who immigrated to the US from the ashes of the Holocaust and were able to freely raise a Jewish family.
In Israel, also a democracy, political and community leaders need to recommit to the values of freedom, equality, and justice, especially now — not just in theory, but in policy and practice.
Even though Israel remains without a constitution, these values need to be paramount, both in speech and action; in classrooms and courtrooms; in the Knesset and in the beit knesset. Freedom must extend to agunot, women trapped in marriages that have fallen apart and are often abusive, because their husbands refuse to grant them the halachic get required for a legal divorce. Jewish law demands that state rabbinic and government officials must do more to ensure the religious and civil laws are used in ways that promote freedom and dignity for these women.
Equality must be extended to minorities, including Arabs, Muslims, Christians, and Druze, who often face discrimination. From the lack of government investment in these communities to the racism expressed by some politicians, community leaders, and parts of the general public, minorities often do not receive fully equal treatment. Equality is also a value that needs to be embraced by the citizens. The most glaring example of this today is the continuing refusal of the ultra-Orthodox sector to serve in the army, which puts an undue heavy burden on those who do serve, including secular and religious Jews, Christians, Druze, and Bedouins.
Perhaps an approach that can help is trying to be more thankful for and aware of these democratic values derived from our very own Jewish tradition, especially now as we attempt to pick up the pieces and rebuild. Part of being thankful is looking beyond ourselves.
This is illustrated in a powerful way in the order of the words in the morning recitation of “modeh ani” — “thankful am I.” Usually the order would be “ani modeh” (“I am thankful”), but this prayer flips that order, emphasizing the thankfulness before the “I.” This implies we are better off as individuals, as a family, community and as a society when the first word out of our mouths is “thanks” rather than “I.”
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln established an official date for Thanksgiving as a national holiday and called on everyone to care for the widows, orphans, and the wounded as the nation sought healing. This is the spirit we need in Israel now: to use gratitude as a moral call to rebuild our society, rooted in the very Biblical values that have long given hope to the world.
Rabbi Dr. Brander is the President and Rosh HaYeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone, a network of 32 educational institutions in Israel. He previously served as a vice president at Yeshiva University in New York and is Rabbi Emeritus of the Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida.