Suffering is not a zero-sum game, even when it comes to the Holocaust. But based on many comments from inside the Jewish community about the new film, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, one might think otherwise. Apparently, the very notion of a film which evokes sympathy for a German, in this case a seven year old boy named Bruno, is simply too much to bear. And that for me is too much to bear.
The movie tells the story of a child whose father is the commandant of what appears to be the Auschwitz death camp. He befriends a Jewish prisoner his own age, a boy named Shmuel. The unfolding of that relationship provides a tragic metaphor for the entire Shoah – one that sagely accepts the impossibility of explaining or understanding the fullness of the horror.
Amazingly, some Jewish reviewers are more concerned about films focus on the story of little Bruno than upon that of Shmuel. One feels the reviewers grasping for arguments (often ridiculous ones) against the film ultimately because they can not accept the loss of a Jewish monopoly on the suffering of the Holocaust.
The primary focus of Hitler’s genocidal aspirations was the Jews, but we were far from the only victims.

There are many perspectives from which to tell a story of such epic evil. And there are more victims than we can ever imagine when things go that terribly wrong for the human race. In fact, the ability to appreciate the victimization of others is often central to preventing the suffering of all people.
What would have happened 70 years ago tonight if Germans had believed that the suffering of others demanded their attention? What would have happened if they had risen against the mobs of young men smashing the windows of Jewish-owned businesses and burning cultural and religious centers, on what came to be known as Kristallnacht?
While the concern of Jewish movie reviewers about a film is not morally equivalent to the silence across Germany in what came to be understood as a prologue to the Holocaust, it should trouble us. Any time the suffering of one community hardens its heart to the suffering of others, it should trouble us.
The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas presents an important opportunity to tell the story of the Holocaust as one which all people must know and tell – not because Jews insist upon it, but because in telling this story we remind ourselves that we all suffer any time our vision of a better future demands the disappearance of other human beings. Their suffering, as the film helps us to understand, will always become our suffering. And by contrast, their liberation will always be our own.