According to Merriam-Webster, a holocaust is destruction involving widespread death, especially by fire. In 1943, World War II reached its climax. At that time, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and homosexuals were all herded like cattle into concentration camps by Adolf Hitler's Nazi army. Hitler's goal was to train what he believed to be a "superior" race known as the Aryan. Hitler believed that the Aryan race (blond hair and blue eyes) was "superior" to these groups of people. According to Hitler, "When human hearts break and human souls despair, then, from the twilight of the past, the great conquerors of distress and care, of shame and misery, of spiritual slavery and physical constraint, lower their eyes and stretch out their eternal hands. to desperate mortals. Woe to the people who are ashamed to seize them! Here, Hitler illustrates how the Aryans are “conquerors” over “desperate mortals.” The Nazi Party was led by Adolf Hitler, a manipulative and cruel dictator. Although John Boyne describes the appearance of the prisoners at Auschwitz, he leaves out important details when describing the setting of Berlin in 1943, what the Auschwitz concentration camp was like, and how the camp residents were treated. In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, a naive young boy, Bruno, recounts from his point of view how the events of the Holocaust unfolded. In 1943, the beginning of the story, Bruno's father, a commander in Hitler's army, was promoted and settled in Oswiecim with his family. Oswiecim is home to the hideous Auschwitz concentration camp. While Bruno plays near a fence on the edge of the Auschwitz concentration camp, against his father's orders, he befriends a young Jewish man...... middle of paper . .....This was the camp, and how the camp prisoners were cared for. Works cited « ARYANISM | Aryan Race.” ARYANISM | main. Accessed March 15, 2011. Boyne, John. The boy in the striped pajamas. New York: David Fickling Books, 2006.Easton. “Humanities 221”. SUNY Geneséo | SUNY Geneseo. Accessed March 15, 2011. Oakman, Daniel. "The Battle of Berlin - Issue 25 - Wartime: Official Magazine of the Australian War Memorial." Australian War Memorial - Home. Accessed March 10, 2011. Smart, Victor and Chris Webb. "Treblinka, the withdrawal of Eberl and the restructuring of the camps. We www.HolocaustResearchProject.org." Holocaust Education and Archives Research Team. Accessed March 10, 2011 “Tattoos and numbers: the prisoner identification system at Auschwitz.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Accessed March 15. 2011.