What is the setting of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne? More specifically, what is the time and place?

is very clearly
understood to take place during the events of WWII, during a time when the tragic events of the
Holocaust of the Jewish people were well underway. We know this, first and foremost, from the
fact that the primary narrative focus of the book is an interaction between Bruno, the young son
of an SS officer, and Shmuel, a young boy who is imprisoned in the concentration camp at
Auschwitz. Though the exact nature of Shmuel's circumstances are somewhat unclear to Bruno, they
are entirely clear to the reader, who experiences the cruelof Bruno's innocence firsthand.


Because of this, we can surmise that the events of the story take place
sometime between 1941 and 1945. Beyond that, we would only be guessing. The exact time of the
story is not precisely relevant, as the horrors of concentration camps and the ignorance of many
German civilians, particularly children, were uniform throughout. As far as exact place goes, we
are...