In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, identify eight scenes that were similar to the Holocaust time period.

I think that one of the most effective scenes to mirror the Holocaust was where Bruno, Shmuel, and other people were herded into the gas chamber.  The panic that the scene captured, in terms of the people being taken inside and then when the doors closed was quite realistic.   The gas chamber was one of the most "efficient" ways that the Nazis killed their prisoners.  One detail that the film captures was how there was a panic-filled set of minutes between the locking of the door and the distribution of the pellets that would set off the reaction to release the fatal gas.  The way the film captured that sad moment was very reflective of the Holocaust time period.

Kotler abusing Pavel and Shmuel are two scenes that reflect the cruelty of the Nazis during the Holocaust.  Pavel is an old man and Shmuel is a child. However, Kotler does not miss the chance to physically and emotionally abuse them.  The barbarism he displays is effective in recreating the terror that was the Holocaust.  Both Pavel and Shmuel did not do anything wrong, and yet they were the recipients of brutality, a reality that many experienced in the Holocaust.

Shmuel's small hands are shown in unflinching detail. This reflects how many victims of the Nazis were starved.  The small fingers mirror his emaciated body, something that brings to light the thinness of the victims. When Allied forces liberated the camps, the sight of the gaunt bodies made them think they were witnessing the walking dead, something that the scene with Shmuel's tiny fingers conveys quite well.

From the Nazi side of reality, the dinner scene conversation between Kotler and Bruno's father shows how the Nazis compartmentalized what they were doing. The conversation that takes place does not acknowledge the moral or ethical implications behind being the architects of millions of deaths.  Rather, their conversation is very banal. It is everyday conversation about their own lives, something that seems to go against the idea that a massive scale of death and suffering is taking place outside. There was a compartmentalization to many Nazis. What they did at "work" was never brought home.  They were model husbands, wives, and parents at home, even though they spent their days at work committing atrocities to husbands, wives, and parents.  

The fence that divides Bruno and Shmuel is another effective scene.  The barbed wire was something that many survivors of the Holocaust never forgot.  The world outside that fence was so much happier, so much better, than what was in it.  A simple change in placement in relation to that fence altered so much, and the fact that Bruno is one side while Shmuel is on the other communicates that quite well.

Herr Liszt's teachings were another historically valid element in the film.  The Nazis used education as propaganda to indoctrinate millions of German children to embrace antisemitism and Germany's perceived greatness.  This use of propaganda helped to ensure the obedience and conformity which facilitated the millions of deaths within the Holocaust.

Finally, the smoke from the chimneys alerts Bruno's mother what is taking place at Auschwitz.  This is historically accurate because the massive scale of death was communicated through the crematorium's smoke.  Upon seeing Auschwitz for the first time, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel writes, "Never shall I forget that smoke."  This conveys how intense and dominant the smoke was, the very same smoke that causes Bruno's mother to speak to her husband with condemnation and shame at the role he is playing in one of history's saddest chapters.