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Moving day
At the very beginning of the book, Bruno gets the message that he and his family are moving away from the city. The maid in the family is packing all of Bruno's clothes and toys in a bag when he enters his room. He asks his mother what is going on and she tells him that they are moving and that there is nothing he can say or do to stop it. The reason they are moving is that Father has got a new position at his job and that position requires him to move and live at Auschwitz. -
The New House
When Bruno first saw his new home at Auschwitz he was disappointed. His old house in Berlin had stood on a quiet street alongside a handful other big houses just like his own. But the new one stood completely alone and it looked really old. He didn't like it at all because this house only had three floors and his old house had five. -
The Foreseeable Future
Bruno didn't like it there at the new house, it was far away from all his friends in Berlin and it was nothing to do there. One day he went into Gretel's room, his sister, and asked her how long they were going to be there. She answered him that it was only for a few weeks, or as Father had told her, the foreseeable future. Bruno didn't think that a few weeks was too bad. In his mind, he had pictured them being there for at least a month. -
Through the Window
From the window of his room, Bruno could see a long way. And what he saw made him wonder, he saw an enormous open field with hundreds of huts on it. And surrounding the field was a giant fence. It stretched longer than Bruno could see. But the most interesting thing to Bruno was that there were people out on the field, he couldn't see what they were doing but he could see what they were wearing. All of them were wearing the same outfit, a striped pyjamas. -
The Conversation with Father
As in the old house, Bruno's father made himself an office. Bruno wanted to talk to his father about what he had seen through his bedroom window, but his father was always in his office. So, Bruno decided to go in there. He knocked on the door and his father told him to enter. Bruno entered and asked him right away, "Who are those people out in the fields?" Father answered, "Ah, those people... well, they are not people at all Bruno, at least not as we understand the term." -
The Homemade Swing
After a few weeks at Auschwitz, Bruno started to get really bored. So he decided that he had to make the best out of the situation. He remembered seeing some old tires laying behind the shed in the garden, therefore he decided to make a homemade swing. He went down in the basement and found a rope, he cut it to the length he thought he needed and brought it outside and dropped it down under one of the big oak trees in the garden. With the rope and the tire, he made a swing. -
The Accident
After setting up the swing, Bruno obviously wanted to try it out. He jumped up into the ring and started swinging. After a while of swinging, Bruno fell off and hurt himself. Neither mother nor father was home at the time so one of the guys working at the house came running out. He told Bruno that he had once been a doctor, so he could help Bruno. Bruno found this very odd considering that this man was working as a chef for Bruno and his family. -
Grandparents
One of the things Bruno missed the most about living in Berlin was his grandparents, they lived in the same house as Bruno. Every Christmas Bruno and Gretel's grandmother made them participate in a roleplay they would perform on Christmas Eve. Bruno didn't like that very much because she always made them practice for the play days in advance. It wasn't just to perform on Christmas Eve, no, they had to memorize lines and practice for several days in advance. And Bruno wasn't a big fan. -
The walk along the fence
Anytime Bruno got bored he liked to take walks along the big fence that was separating him from the men in the striped pyjamas. This particular time he walked on for about an hour. When he turned and looked back at the house he couldn't see it anymore. Suddenly he spotted a small dot in the distance, he wondered what it was so he decided to give it a closer look. When he got closer he could see that it was a boy around his age just sitting on the ground with his feet tucked under him. -
The first encounter with the boy in the striped pyjamas
When Bruno saw that there was a boy sitting on the ground on the other side of the fence, he was actually happy. In his mind, this was the first opportunity for him to get a friend around here. When Bruno came face to face with the boy on the other side of the fence he said, "Hallo", and the boy answered "Hallo". Then Bruno started to talk about how he had been exploring around here and that he hadn't found anything besides the boy himself. -
The continues meetings
Bruno and the boy from the other side of the fence, named Schmuel, continued to talk to each other. Every day Bruno walked down alongside the fence to meet Schmuel. They sat and talked to each other, that was the only thing they did because the big fence was keeping them apart. But that didn't stop them from sitting and talking, and so they did. Over the next weeks and months they sat and talked about pretty much anything, Bruno told Schmuel all about his family and Schmuel sat and listened. -
The Return to Berlin
One day after being at Auschwitz for over a year, Bruno's mother and father gather the family around the table. Then they told Bruno and Gretel that Bruno, Gretel, and mother were moving back to Berlin. Father had to stay a little longer because of his job. If Bruno's parents had said this to him a year ago he would have been over the moon about moving back home to Berlin, but now he had a friend here, so Bruno didn't want to go back to Berlin. He wanted to stay here at Auschwitz. -
Schmuel's father is missing
The day after Bruno got to know that he was leaving Auschwitz he and Schmuel were talking, as usual. But that day Schmuel sounded more down than before. Bruno asked him what was going on and Schmuel answered that his dad had gone missing. Schmuel said that he and a group of others had been taken on a march by the soldiers and never return. No one had seen them for several days. Bruno felt terrible and asked if there was anything he could do to help. Schmuel said that there was one thing... -
Bruno in a striped pyjamas
After Schmuel said that there was one thing Bruno could do to help, he said that Bruno could come over to his side of the fence and help him look for his father. Bruno thought that was a good idea. So they planed that they were gonna meet back at the same location as always tomorrow and that Schmuel would bring a set of striped pyjamas for Bruno so he could sneak under the fence and blend in with the rest of the men on that side of the fence. And so they did just that.Bruno snuck under the fence -
The March
Once Bruno was on the other side of the fence, Bruno and Schmuel walked back to the huts and all the other men in striped pyjamas and the soldiers. Then they looked for Schmuel's father for a couple of hours without any luck. Suddenly the soldiers gathered a bunch of them in a group and said they were going on a march. The thing about the march is that no one has ever returned from one. But they had no choice than to go. The group of men in striped pyjamas was led into a room with a metal door. -
The Metal Room
Schmuel, Bruno and all the other men in striped pyjamas was led into a small metal room with no windows and no lights. Once everyone was inside, the door was locked behind them and it got pitch black in the room... At first, they screamed but after a while, the screams faded out and there was nothing but total silence in the small metal room...