The boy in the striped pyjamas

Bruno

Appearance: Bruno is a nine year old German boy. He is described as very small and well-groomed. He has blonde hair.
Character: Bruno loves exploring, reading and playing. He is very sensitive, naive and curious. Bruno has a really big heart. He loves Berlin, his friends and grandparents. He would like to be a soldier or an explorer when he grows up.
Bruno doesn’t know anything about the 
 holocaust, about Jews, and about concentration camp and 
 father’s job. He doesn’t like his older sister Gretel, he thinks she is a “hopeless case”.


Gretel

Gretel is a twelve year old girl. She is the older sister of Bruno.

Appearance: Gretel has blonde hair and always has pigtails.

Character: Gretel is a tipical teen-girl. With her little brother Bruno, she’s always very bossing and commanding. She treats him like a silly little child and thinks she is much more intelligent and older than him, also if there are only four years of difference.
Gretel loves dolls and has many of them in her bedroom. But over time, she becomes interested in German history and war, so she puts the dolls away and instead of them she hangs up world maps and Nazi things on the wall in her bedroom.
 .

Gretel has a crush on the young soldier, Lieutenant Kotler.
 -


Mother

Mother gets described as a tall, beautiful woman with long, red hair. She’s well dressed at the beginning of the story, but over time she spends less and less time for beauty.
Mother doesn’t want to move away but tries 
 to make the best out of it. She’s a very careful and respectful person, but she’s quite insecure.
 -She wants to leave father at the end.


Father

Father is a German Nazi-commander. He loves Gretel and Bruno but is a really strict man. He is very cruel to other people, especially Jews and othe people who are against hitler and the national socialistics.
 -At the beginning of the story, father gets promoted and has to go to Out-With (Auschwitz, Poland). (Then Bruno thinks father did 
 something wrong that they have to go to 
 such a terrible place)
 -He’s a really important man for the Fury. The fury has “big things in mind for him”.


Shmuel

Shmuel is a nine year old Jew and over time he gets Bruno’s best friend

Appearance: Also if Bruno is very small for his age, Shmuel is much smaller and thinner than him. He looks unhealthy; Bruno says he has never seen such a unhealthy, grey colored face as Shmuel’s.
Shmuel always sits cross-legged on the ground next to the fence of the concentration camp. He just wants to be alone and seems very sad and depressive.

In the story Shmuel tells Bruno of his life: First he lived in a small flat above his 
 father’s watchmaker store in Cracow. But then they had to move: They had to live in one small room 
 with 11 people. Then the family hat to go to Out-With by 
 train (It was horrible there because there were too many people, there was no air to breathe and Shmuel had afraid.)

Character: Shmuel likes animals. He wants to work in the zoo when he grows up. Also he has a really big heart and friendship is very important for him. He loves his family but he hates all the soldiers and the germans because they always treat him and his family very very badly.


Pavel

Pavel is an old Jew, also he is very small and skinny and looks unhealthy.
 He tells Bruno that once he was a doctor, but now he’s 
 prisoner of Out-With and has to peel 
 vegetables and prepare meals. He works for Bruno’s family.

Lieutenant Kotler

Lieutenant Kotler is a 19 years old soldier.
Appearance: He always wears a uniform and looks very strict and dutiful. He is a young man and looks tall, blonde and smart. He looks very strict.
Character: He hates Jews and treats them like dirt. He’s a brutal person.
Bruno doesn’t like him because:

-> He always calls him “little man” 

-> He’s mean and brutal and shouts at Pavel 

-> He killed a dog with a gun and Bruno sees it

Gretel has a crush on him. Shmuel has afraid of him and hates him. But Mother likes him, they always talked and laughed.


Grandmother

Grandmother is Father’s mother. Once she was a popular singer and entertainer. She is a powerful woman and always says what she thinks. She loves acting and theatre, so she often writes short 
 plays with Bruno and Gretel to show it to father, 
 mother and grandfather. She always makes costumes 
 for them and that’s Bruno’s favorite part.

Bruno misses her very much and writes her a letter.
-She’s ashamed of herself and Father because of his job.
So she fights with father and they don’t make it up, but then 
 she dies and Father’s really sad.


Grandfather

Grandfather is father’s father, he owns a restaurant. 
 He is proud of father’s job.


The Fury

The “fury” is Adolf Hitler. He’s father’s boss and has “big things in 
 mind for father”. 
Once he and his girlfriend (Eva Braun, a beautiful blonde 
 woman) were at Bruno’s home for dinner. 
Bruno doesn’t like him. He thinks he’s very rude because 
 he sat into fathers seat without saying nothing.
Mother doesn’t like him because if the fury had never 
 come for dinner, they wouldn’t have left Berlin.


Maria

Maria is the housemaid of Bruno’s family.
She is very thankful and has much respect of father 
 because he helped her and her mother very much. (Her 
 mother worked for father’s mother)


Lars

Lars is the butler of Bruno’s family.


Karl, Daniel & Martin

Karl, Daniel and Martin are Bruno’s best friends in Berlin. 
 Bruno misses them very much at the beginning of the story, but then over time he forgets them.


Hilda, Isobel & Louise

Hilda, Isobel and Louise are Gretel’s best friends in Berlin. Bruno doesn’t like 
 them, he calls them “monsters” (One monster 
 always says that he’s small and only 6 years old) 


Herr Liszt

Herr Liszt is the personal teacher of Gretel and Bruno.
He is a Nazi supporter and teaches them about:
 social science, history, geography. Bruno doesn’t like him because he wants to read adventure books instead of the boring history books.