For the most part it is not considered historically accurate, and at least in my classes in Holocaust literature we have been heavily discouraged from using it as a tool for teaching the Holocaust because it presents some very problematic narratives. We know that there were children living with their commandant fathers, and we know that this book presents something worlds away from their experiences. The book has been accused of putting forward a narrative which doesn't allow for any real understanding of the history of the Holocaust. As a whole the story is both impossible and implausible.

First off, the book only presents Jewish people through the lens of the suffering of a German boy. The climax of the story is a German boy being killed, not the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered. The reader doesn't get empathy towards Jews as Jews, they have empathy only through the lens of a non-Jewish character. There is a serious confusion of victimhood. Readers don't learn about the victims of the Holocaust, and the ultimate empathy is not for the Jewish Shmuel, but for Bruno through his parents (both Nazis) emotions. The reader doesn't get the horror of children who are Jewish, or Roma being killed, they get a German child who's the least likely person in the world to die in Auschwitz. The empathy towards the real victims is extremely lacking.

As to accuracy, the story grossly underestimates the amount of indoctrination of children in Nazi Germany. You had to be an ardent Nazi, a long time party member, and SS member, to be promoted to be the commandant of a concentration or death camp. Part of that status within the party was having "Nazi" children. A boy of Bruno's age would have grown up with Nazi ideology in every facet of his life. He would have been expected to be a prominent Hitler Youth member, he would have been expected to learn and parrot Nazi ideology. He would have been expected to play games like the 1936 "Juden Raus!" (Jews out!) and been given anti-Semitic children's books like "The Poisonous Mushroom" and " Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath". He would have been taught at home, in school, and by his community to praise Hitler, and hate Jews. If he did come in contact with a Jew, empathy as a response would have been extraordinarily unlikely. There is, excuse my bluntness, no way in Hell a child of an SS man would not know Hitler's name. He would have been expected to know to salute Hitler, have listened to his speeches on the radio. He may have even been expected to greet his father with a "Hail Hitler". If a party member wasn't teaching his children Nazi ideology he would have come under great suspicion, not gained a promotion to what was considered one of the most important "projects" of the Reich. The camp is somewhat coded to be Auschwitz, and so Bruno's father is coded to be Rudolf Hoess. Hoess was an important party member since 1922, over a decade before the Nazis gained governmental power. This man was not wishy washy so to speak on Nazi ideology and made sure his children were raised from birth with that same ideology.

We know that Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz raised his children in a house just off the grounds of Auschwitz. So the child of a commandant living this near the camp is historically accurate. However, Bruno's life is not quite what the Hoess children would remember. Though they were not told explicitly what the camp was for, they saw the smoke, and they were told that their father ran a prison camp, and that the prisoners were "untermenschen" to use Nazi vocabulary. Privileged prisoners acted as servants, repairing the family's home and garden. The children knew exactly what the striped uniforms meant, and that they meant that they as good German children were superior to those prisoners in every way. They were told not to touch or speak to the prisoners because they were dirty. The children were also not allowed to freely roam the perimeter of the camp. They were kept in the area of the family's villa under strict supervision by their mother and German nannies. Despite this, Charlotte Delbo, a French survivor of Auschwitz 1, writes about seeing the commandants children playing a violent game of commandant and prisoner, which ends in the older child who is playing the commandant ordering “zum krematorium!” To the crematorium. At the same time efforts to hide the camp were made, the second floor windows of the home were clouded so the children and Hoess' wife wouldn't have to look at the camp. Should, hypothetically one of the commandant's children gone walking around the perimeter of Auschwitz, they would have immediately been seen by both guards and prisoners, and the guards would have promptly taken them back home. Auschwitz was crowded with prisoners, guards, and people from transports condemned to death. It was loud, with shouting, screams, and often gunshots. It smelled of burning human flesh. There were very few children in either Auschwitz I or II, the vast, vast majority were killed on arrival, and those who were there were not simply left to wander or sit by a fence. Yet little Shmuel says there are many other children, implausible to say the least. In fact any prisoner caught near the fence was likely to be shot. The barbed wire fence was also electrified, often reinforced by two or three additional layers of electrified barbed wire, and heavily guarded by guards on the ground and in watch towers every several hundred feet. The camps were full of people, they were incredibly dirty, often covered in both mud and their own feces (something the film did not represent). They were incredibly malnourished, they were often beaten, and were often ill. Bodies were a constant sight.

You learn just about nothing about a death camp, about antisemitism, or about surviving or dying in the Holocaust from this story, not really. It is at best an inaccurate representation, and at worst a story made for German, and indeed American redemption for actions done or left undone during the Holocaust. Fiction of the Holocaust usually at least allegorically tells a "true" story, frankly there's no need to make anything up, the truth is harsh enough. Far too harsh. Telling a story that is so demonstratively untrue does a serious disservice to the victims and to historical truth, and indeed to today's young learners. I would classify the book as falling into the category of fiction which is exploitative, inaccurate, and thereby falls under the category of damaging portrayals which scholar Saul Fiedlander warns against when he states that authors must take care not to produce literature which shows a banal, exploitative, or inadequately represented, the facts, particularly of this history must be at maintained at least in the most base sense.

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"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: A Blessing or Curse for Holocaust Education?" Michael Gray

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/m/mills-mary/mills-00.html

http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1857440,00.html

"Probing the Limits of Representation" Saul Friedlander

Thanks for the info