Introduction
The narrative alternates between the past and the present. The plot synopsis focuses on Gretel’s background and then her present in chronological sequence to keep the narrative simple.
The conflict has ended. Nazi Germany was defeated, and people despise the Nazis. Gretel’s father was the commandant of Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp where over one million people were murdered. The Allies try top Nazis and hang Gretel’s father.
Gretel and her mother change their names and stories and go to Paris to evade probable punishment. Gretel, a fifteen-year-old shop clerk, follows Émile Vannier, while her mother, Nathalie, has a romantic involvement with the showy Rémy Toussaint.
Émile’s brother was a member of the French Resistance and was murdered by the Nazis. Rémy and his brother were members of the Resistance, and the Nazis assassinated his brother. Émile and Rémy dupe Gretel and her mother into accompanying them to a warehouse, where they, along with other townspeople whose loved ones have been brutalized by Nazis, strip them naked and savagely clip off clumps of their hair.
Gretel relocates to Sydney, Australia, after Nathalie dies of drunkenness and grief. She works at a women’s clothing store and lives with Cait, a tall Irish lesbian. Cait works in a pub, and Gretel notices a strange man there. She realizes the man is Kurt Kotler, Gretel’s father’s assistant as an adolescent SS officer. Gretel planned to take his son, Hugo, and murder him and herself out of vengeance and hopelessness. She lacks the cruelty to carry it out. Instead, she confronts Kurt in a cafe, but she avoids exposing Kurt to two adjacent police officers because doing so would reveal her identity.
Gretel worked at Harrods in London from 1953 to 1954 and had a romantic involvement with an assistant manager, David Rotheram. She also meets David’s buddy, Edgar Fernsby, and the three of them watch a video about WWII and the Holocaust. Gretel is shocked after seeing the movie, and she runs out of the theater and throws herself in front of a bus.
Gretel survives and informs David of the truth. David despises Gretel because the Nazis gassed his mother, father, and sister at the Treblinka concentration camp. He has no idea Gretel is pregnant or that he is the father.
Edgar doesn’t mind that she’s pregnant, and despite his desire to despise Gretel for her Nazi past, he adores her. Gretel names her daughter Heidi before placing her for adoption when they marry. Edgar rose to prominence as a historian after releasing a three-volume chronicle of World War II and the Holocaust. They produce a son, Caden, and relocate to the posh Winterville Court so Gretel may be close to Heidi, who lives across the hall and is unaware that Gretel is her biological mother.
Gretel is 91 years old and lives alone in 2022. Edgar died of asthma in 2008, and Heidi suffers from both physical and emotional illnesses. A family moves into Gretel’s flat below. Madelyn, the mother, is an actress, Alex, the father, is a film producer, and Henry, their kid, is nine years old. Gretel dislikes young males because they remind her of her brother and their painful history. Winterville Court is filled with drama thanks to the family. Gretel overhears an altercation and notices Madelyn dragging a rock across her face outside. She also notes that Henry is frequently injured and bruised.
Madelyn, feeling out of sorts, asks Gretel to bring up Henry from school one day. Gretel, according to Madelyn, is unable to inform Alex. Alex will murder Madelyn if he finds out. The teacher must contact Alex to obtain his permission. Later, Madelyn attempts suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills, and Gretel talks about it with Eleanor, Caden’s soon-to-be fourth wife. They notify the authorities, but Gretel believes the authorities will not intervene.
Gretel confronts Alex about his violent conduct, but he finds her past and threatens to expose her if she exposes him. Gretel agrees to leave the family alone but then acts. The day before Caden marries Eleanor, she murders Alex. Gretel attends the wedding and has a good time. She subsequently goes to prison, which she refers to as a retirement home. In prison, she finally tackles her anguish and confronts her past. Bruno is her brother’s name, she claims.
Part 1, Analysis of Chapters 1-11
Winterville Court represents a tainted environment. It was a safe haven prior to Mr. Richardson’s death. Gretel lives there with her husband and son, as well as her daughter in the apartment across the hall (readers do not learn Heidi is Gretel’s daughter until Part 3, Chapter 14). “I resented the fact that my ordered world might be upset,” Gretel admits. “I was hoping for someone who didn’t care about the woman who lived above them” (13). In later chapters, Madelyn, Alex, and Henry would immerse Gretel in their pain, upending the order she constructed, and confirming her fears about new neighbors. However, the destruction they cause is arguably helpful because it relates to Breaking Cycles of Harm, a fundamental concept.
Boyne employs allusion as a literary tactic to heighten suspense and prepare the reader for what is to follow. Boyne does not mention outright that Alex is a predator and a bully, but he implies it. Alex is a film producer, and as a result of the MeToo movement, which raises awareness about sexual misconduct, men in the film and entertainment industries have suffered consequences for their destructive behavior. When Madelyn says, “I would have liked to have stayed working in the theater, but my husband insisted that I concentrate on film” , she suggests Alex’s possessiveness. Alex is domineering and believes he can tell Madelyn what to do.
Allusion also connects to the issue of Keeping Secrets vs. Facing Guilt. Gretel conceals her past by referring to it rather than confronting it. In the summer of 1946, Gretel recalls, “When we arrived at that other place, I had only gone beyond the fence once, on that single day that Father had brought me into the camp to observe his work”. Auschwitz is transformed into that “other place,” and the Holocaust becomes her father’s “work.”
Émile employs both allusion and explicitness. When he asks Gretel, “Who could ever imagine such things?” he alludes to the horrors of the Holocaust. Who could have imagined such places?”. It’s almost as if the Nazis’ horrific concentration camps defy categorization. When describing how the Nazis murdered his brother, Émile utilizes exact diction. This is an example of imagery, which is a literary device in which the author employs vivid words to paint a vivid picture. The visual emphasizes Nazi ferocity and foreshadows the brutality inflicted on Gretel and her mother by Émile and others.
Émile is one of many predatory men introduced by Boyne in Part 1. There’s also Toussaint and Alex, and Caden appears to be predatory as he urges his mother to sell her apartment. The presence of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France from 1774 to 1792, continues the subject of predatory males versus the women they prey on, as the men spearheading the French Revolution executed her.
Gretel’s journey is also symbolized by Marie Antoinette’s story. Marie Antoinette, like Gretel, did not select her situation. She had no say in whether she married Louis XVI (the future King of France, whom Revolutionaries also killed) at the age of 15. Despite her official status, she had no say in how France was managed. While Gretel is German, Marie Antoinette is Austrian—a country that has long been tied to Germany.
Boyne juxtaposes the past with the present to show how Gretel hasn’t changed that much. In 2022, like in 1946, she maintains secrets and can’t confront the past. When Gretel learns that Madelyn has a nine-year-old boy, she feels “[t]he panic. The fear. The fear of what was to come”. The child reminds Gretel of her brother. Decades later, she still can’t grapple with what happened to him and the role she played—she can’t mention his name.
Part One, Chapter Twelve, Interlude One Analysis
Boyne employs language to depict Gretel’s battle with her mother, Nathalie. They had rambling discussions about how they arrived at Auschwitz, whether Nathalie chose to go, and whether Nathalie was aware of the systematic killings. Their conversation does not yield clear conclusions. Gretel suspects them, but Nathalie insists, “We’re guilty of nothing”. The acrimony is related to the issue of Keeping Secrets vs. Confronting Guilt, as keeping secrets and dealing with guilt is not a peaceful or harmonic activity.
Gretel eventually expresses the impact of her guilt in the Interlude—sleepless nights, intrusions during moments of joy—and recognizes what she feels sorry about. Gretel, who rejects her doctor’s concept of “survivor’s guilt,” is troubled by “remembrances of days and hours when you could have done something to prevent tragedy but chose not to.” When you’d rather play with your toys or flirt with a lovely young lieutenant”. She does not believe her doctor genuinely believes or understands her experience, and she is unwilling to unburden herself of her secrets, leaving some of her trauma unsolved despite progress in other areas.
The issue of preserving secrets versus confronting guilt is related to a different theme: The Indelible Impact of History and Trauma. Gretel and Nathalie are forced to lie about their identities since they are unable to escape their Nazi history and the murder and destruction it wrought. Gretel ponders the question, “Are we to maintain this fiction for the rest of our lives?” “It’s no longer fiction,” her mother responds. “Tell a story enough times, and it becomes the truth”. Nathalie believes that they must develop new identities because history would ruin them forever if they did not.
Another minor motif that emerges is the difficulty of motherhood: none of the moms in the novel have it easy with their children. Nathalie slaps Gretel, Madelyn neglects herself and Henry, and it is discovered that Gretel beat Caden when he crossed the fence. What the reader doesn’t realize yet is that Heidi is Gretel’s daughter, and Gretel looks after her, keeping her company and making sure no one scams her or, in the case of Oberon, forces her to make wrong decisions.
Boyne use foreshadowing and provides hints as to what will happen to set up the ending of Part 2. The reader is led to believe that Émile and Toussaint will cause Gretel and her mother harm. Gretel is antagonized by Émile, who subjected her to brutal sex. When Toussaint tells her about the plotting pair in Thérèse Raquin, he lies about not knowing Émile and hints at his devious intents. Both men assure Gretel and Nathalie that they will remember the night that ends with their violent scalping for the rest of their lives. Similarly, the reader may tell Madelyn and Henry are in an abusive relationship in 2022 because of Henry’s damaged arm.
Boyne also used red herrings, or deceptive clues, to disrupt the reader’s expectations. Heidi’s positive assessment of Alex is a red herring: she may find him attractive, but he turns out to be horrifying. Toussaint claims in 1946 that he “would sooner sacrifice a limb” than harm Gretel and her mother (100), but he and the others do harm Gretel and her mother. The use of red herrings skews the reader’s expectations, making what happens unexpected.
Boyne illustrates the gamut of human pain and the various ways humans injure one another by juxtaposing Alex’s mistreatment with that of Gretel and Nathalie.
Part 2: Analysis of Chapters 1-11
Cait continues the subject of predatory guys. When her father discovered her pregnancy, he beat her by kicking her in the stomach. Cait, on the other hand, can hold her own in the bar. She has a “quick tongue” and considers the guys she serves to be sad rather than predatory. “The fellas make a disgrace of themselves in the pub,” Cait tells Gretel. They’re telling me what their fathers did in Gallipoli in the first war, and what they did in the second”. Gretel defends herself at the bar from the predatory older man by pushing “him against the wall, where he hits his head against the corner of a painting”. However, men aren’t the only toxic and vicious characters in the book, as Miss Brilliant’s intolerance demonstrates.
Throughout the segment, the Indelible Impact of History and Trauma is manifested. The name of Cait’s tavern, Fortune of War, alludes to both World War II and Gretel’s background. Cait detects Gretel’s unavoidable history when they first meet. “So, are you going to tell me?” Cait inquires of Gretel. […] The secret you’re keeping. “I’m sure there is one”. Gretel’s pain and background control her in 2022, as Alex informs her, “[Y]ou, my dear, have the one thing that every actress needs above all others The ability to lie”. Alex emphasizes the connection between history/trauma and secrets/guilt. Gretel is still unable to separate herself from her traumatized background. She conceals it, compounding her guilt.
In contrast, the segment foreshadows Gretel’s ability to Break Harmful Cycles. In 2022, Gretel still can’t pronounce her brother’s name or the name of the “other place,” but she can say the Jewish boy’s name, Shmuel, indicating her ability to confront her history. Gretel can be a positive presence around young boys by picking up Henry and feeding him, and she doesn’t have to think of all young boys as references or representations of her brother. Gretel’s ambition to find Kurt Kotler in 1953 demonstrates that she will not be able to escape from her tragedy indefinitely. Instead of avoiding Kotler or leaving him alone, she follows him.
The Kotler story contributes to the book’s intriguing and enigmatic mood. If the reader hasn’t already read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, they’re left wondering who this man is, and they keep reading to find out. If the reader has read the first book, they’ll be curious to find out if the man is Kotler and what Gretel has in store for him, as well as what Kotler might do to her if he knows she’s watching him. The eye contact and the image of the fence he draws on the newspaper indicate that he is now aware that Gretel is staring at him and that he, too, recognizes her.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Analysis of Interlude 2
The Indelible Impact of History and Trauma continues over lunch when Eleanor and Caden bring up Auschwitz. The past follows Gretel wherever she goes, and even in 2022, she is unable to address it directly. Instead, she makes a passing reference to it by informing Eleanor, “There was nothing I could have done.” Don’t you notice? Don’t you get it? It would have been impossible even if I had wanted to”. Eleanor asked Gretel what she would have done if she “could have done any job in the world”, but Gretel exploited the question to justify her actions in the past.
Gretel is on the verge of perpetuating harm rather than breaking the cycle of harm when she kidnaps Hugo and plans to murder him and herself. The story creates suspense, leaving readers wondering what will happen to Gretel and the boy. Kurt’s phone call brings resolve, and Gretel has no desire to hurt Hugo or herself. For the time being, she has put a stop to the harmful paradigm.
Boyne’s use of heated discussion continues to explore the complicated issue of Keeping Secrets Versus Confronting Guilt. Kurt does not feel guilty about keeping his identity hidden. Kurt adds of their parents, “They all knew.” It was started by their generation. And it was ours that paid”. Kurt presents himself as a victim of circumstance, adding, “I don’t recall making any conscious decisions about my life.” “It was all laid out for me when I was young”. Gretel disagrees with Kurt, telling him, “You need to pay for what you did”. She wants Kurt to face his Holocaust part and feel as guilty as she does.
Gretel and Kurt’s conversation is peppered with allusions, and Kurt points out Gretel’s incapacity to dig into specifics. “Why do you struggle to call things what they are?” Kurt asks. All of this obscurity. We had Jewish people. There were gas chambers. There were crematoria. We had murder. You’re not going to say your brother’s name. You’re not going to utter any of these—”. Gretel cuts Kurt off. She asks Kurt to face what he did, but she can’t—all she can do is suggest it.
Allusion persists when Gretel visits Auschwitz. Gretel describes a “stone edifice” that “had an austere feeling to it.” “That’s what we call the chamber,” her father explains. Do you want to see it?”. The word “chamber” is deceptive; it is not synonymous with “gas chamber.” Her father is unable to reveal it to her due to a phone call. The conversation with Shmuel is confusing. He claims he will die, but Gretel responds, “No one would let a child your age die”. She has no idea what is going on in 1943. She doesn’t see systematic murder based on her chat with Shmuel or the visuals of the camp. It remains enigmatic and an allusion.
Gretel and her brother fight over what lies beyond the fence before visiting the camp. The fence is a metaphor for transgression. The fence divides the Auschwitz captives from the Nazis, or, in Nazi language, the “subhumans” from the “supreme race.” As Gretel encourages her brother to get under the fence, he crosses the line—he commits a crime and joins the ranks of those killed by the Nazis.
Analysis of Chapters 1-9 in Part 3
Boyne uses foreshadowing to build suspense and give the reader hints about what will happen next. Gretel goes on to say, “Marie Antoinette had long since lost her head and I was now, unusually for me, reading a novel, about a group of senior citizens solving a murder in their retirement village”. While the phrase reflects Gretel’s dry sense of humor, it is also serious, foreshadowing her attempted suicide in 1953 and her murder of Alex in 2022. Alex’s commitment to finding out her family name foreshadows his plan to appease Gretel about his harsh behavior.
When Alex clutches Gretel’s wrist and tells her to keep away from his business, he adds to the subject of predatory men. His demand is related to Keeping Secrets vs. Confronting Guilt. He wishes Gretel would keep his secret. He doesn’t want Gretel or the cops to confront him about his wrongdoing, thus Gretel is complicit and guilty. David and Edgar show in 1953 that the men in Gretel’s life aren’t all predators. Both remain at the hospital with her. David and Gretel have a sexual relationship that they enjoy, and David does not condemn her for liking sex.
Gretel is followed to London by the Holocaust. Miss Aaronson embodies the Indelible Impact of History and Trauma by proudly displaying her concentration camp tattoo and declaring, “I refuse to hide them away.” It is critical that individuals see and recall these numbers”. David, who is Jewish and lost his mother, father, and sister in the Treblinka concentration camp, also contributes to the theme. Her family is featured in the documentary, which is a direct encounter with her background. She attempts to extinguish herself since she is unable to suppress the painful memories.
The documentary Darkness contains a succinct summary of World War II and the Holocaust. Boyne teaches the reader, albeit inadvertently, about what happened by offering a summary of the film. “Mr. Chamberlain” refers to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who served from 1937 to 1940. Chamberlain, like many other international leaders, did not desire war and attempted to appease Hitler, causing him to mistakenly believe there would be “peace for our time”. Kristallnacht, which translates as “the Night of Broken Glass,” occurred on November 9-10, 1938, when the Nazis encouraged an outpouring of violence against Jews and their property. Heinrich Himmler is the head of the SS. Heydrich is Reinhard Heydrich, a powerful SS officer and the leading Nazi in old Czechoslovakia, David’s homeland. Goebbels is the head of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Hitler’s lover is Eva Braun.
When the story shifts to the genocide, Boyne employs images to depict the audience’s reactions. “I could hear people sniffling,” Gretel recounts. “A few stood up to leave, unable to bear what they were witnessing”. The vision transports the reader to the theater, urging them to join the crowd. They may have a similar reaction to explicit portrayals of the Holocaust. Gretel, too, is overwhelmed by what she is witnessing. In the same way that her trauma has spurred impulsive, destructive behaviors in the past—slapping Caden and snatching Hugo—she responds to overwhelming emotions by attempting suicide. This time, she directs her wrath at herself.
Part 3, Chapter 10-Author’s Note Analysis
Gretel again faces the anger of a man after she tells David the truth, and he excoriates her before breaking up with her. He questions her humanity, asking, “Are you even human?” . He also tells her to burn in hell with her father, mother, and brother. The curse connects David to a predatory man from Part 1, Toussaint, who asks Gretel if she’s ready to burn forever with her father. David isn’t predatory like so many other men Gretel encounters, but he still uses her as a target for his hurt and anger at the Nazis, who killed his mother, father, and sister. As the child of a top Nazi, Gretel represents the perpetrators of the Holocaust, just as she did to the French Resistance. However justified David’s anger may be, Gretel isn’t a symbol, but a person, and she was a child at the time.
Once again, Boyne uses contentious dialogue to show the knottiness of secrets and guilt. David insists Gretel is old enough to know the difference “between life and death and right and wrong!”. He claims, “By doing nothing, you did everything”. David’s dialogue centers on binaries: There’s right and wrong, and there’s action versus inaction. His words are hyperbolic. From a dispassionate angle, Gretel didn’t do “everything.” She wasn’t Hitler, nor did she directly carry out any Nazi orders: She had no official position in the Nazi party. Even if she knew it was wrong and that mass death was occurring—and the interlude at Auschwitz indicates that she didn’t—there is no viable action she could’ve taken to stop it as a powerless 12-year-old.
The contentious dialogue between Alex and Gretel furthers the unresolved theme of Keeping Secrets Versus Confronting Guilt. Alex asks Gretel if she feels guilty, and she counters, “You, of all people, are asking me this question?”. Alex replies, “You can’t compare my behavior to yours”. While Gretel certainly feels guilt, her judgment of Alex in this scene indicates her belief that being complicit in a system of harm is different from perpetuating it.
The conduct of Alex and Gretel also links to objective violence versus subjective violence. In Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (Picador, 2008), the Eastern European philosopher Slavoj Žižek defines objective violence as not “attributable to concrete individuals and their ‘evil’ intentions,” but “purely ‘objective,’ systemic, anonymous”. Subjective violence is “enacted by social agents, evil individuals, disciplined repressive apparatuses, fanatical crowds”, so it gets most of the attention. Alex commits subjective violence. He personally assaults his wife and son. Gretel’s Nazi family links her to objective violence. She was a part of a deadly and violent system, and she benefited from it for a period, but she didn’t personally kill or hurt anyone.
In 2022, Gretel committed subjective violence. As her victim is Alex, the murder turns into a form of justice. The subjective violence is also a way for Gretel to purge her guilt. In the psychiatric hospital, she pinpointed the root of her guilt in her choosing not to act to prevent tragedy. Her violence is her final act of Breaking Cycles of Harm by refusing to accept or ignore harm any longer. She couldn’t protect her brother, but she could protect Henry. In jail, she can confront her secrets and guilt—thereby facing her history and trauma—by looking at the family picture and no longer alluding to her brother but saying his name: Bruno.
In the Author’s Note, Boyne states, “I am not trying to create a sympathetic character in Gretel”. Still, her character invites sympathy. Whatever Gretel’s faults, she’s compassionate and loyal. She moves into Winterville Court to be close to her daughter, Heidi, and she sacrifices her last years of freedom to rid Madelyn and Henry of their tormentor. Whether her murder of Alex makes up for her Nazi past is up to the reader.
Discussion Questions
Gretel can’t separate herself from history and trauma—even in modern-day Winterville Court, where Gretel enjoys an “ordered world”, people continually remind her of her history. Heidi notes the chance that Jews might move into the building, and Madelyn mentions that she once played Sally Bowles in Berlin.
The mention of Jews takes Gretel back to the Holocaust, and Bowles returns Gretel to Berlin. As these places represent trauma, Gretel tries to deflect them. She doesn’t reply to Heidi’s comment about Jews, and she gives a terse one-word response to Madelyn, “Indeed”. The appearance of Henry advances the indelible impact of history. Henry reminds Gretel of Bruno and her traumatic past. Alex also links to Gretel’s past, as she frequently connects his predation to the brutality of Nazis.
Earlier in life, Gretel’s trauma follows her to Australia. About moving there, Gretel says, “I wanted to get as far from Europe as I possibly could”. She’s on another continent, but the history and trauma she went through in continental Europe don’t go anywhere. Cait’s bar, Fortune of War, keeps war at the forefront. The presence of Kurt Kotler provides a direct, physical embodiment of her past. Gretel could avoid or ignore him, but the history and trauma he represents pull her toward him. During their confrontation at the cafe, he tells her, “You have the most beautiful scars. Some inflicted by your family; some, perhaps, by me” . The “scars” are figurative—they represent her past trauma. Scars don’t go away, and neither will Gretel’s past.
In London 1953-1954, Gretel’s history and trauma manifest through Miss Aaronson’s tattoo, David’s background, and the documentary. The film features her family, and the explicit reminder of her imputed complicity compels her to try to kill herself. Unable to erase her past and trauma, Gretel tries to eradicate herself.
In “The Various Faces of Trauma,” Zafar states, “We don’t move on from trauma. We move on with it. Trauma causes pain that breaks us and echoes for a lifetime” (Zafar, Samra. “The Various Faces of Trauma.” Harvard Medical School Primary Care Review, 1 July 2022). Gretel doesn’t have to vanquish or erase her traumatic past, but she must learn to live with it. She takes small steps by marrying Edgar, connecting herself to a person who not only accepts her, but who writes books about World War II and the Holocaust. Still, she can’t say her brother’s name or speak openly about the period. After she kills Alex, she can “move” with her past trauma. The death of Alex doesn’t represent the death of history and trauma, but the death of her trying to suppress it and act like it’s not a permanent part of her.
Reflection Essays
1. Boyne’s title comes from Ernest Hemingway’s World War I novel, A Farewell to Arms (Jonathan Cape, 1929), where the narrator states, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”. Apply this quotation to the characters in Boyne’s story. How are they broken? How do their broken places make them stronger?
2. Gretel reads about the life of Marie Antoinette. Research Marie Antoinette and discuss the similarities and differences between the two women.
3. Gretel has many personality traits. She can be funny, assertive, judgmental, and secretive. Discuss Gretel’s multilayered characterization and how it does or doesn’t create a disarming main character.
4. In the Author’s Note, Boyne concedes that writing about the Holocaust carries a burden but not “[t]he burden of education”. What does Boyne mean by this? What does the reader learn from All the Broken Places, even if the author didn’t mean to teach the reader anything?
5. Unpack Gretel’s reasons for killing Alex: How does her action relate to her past? What part of her past is she trying to make amends for? Is killing one person supposed to compensate for, arguably, complicity in a status quo that systematically murdered millions of people?
6. In the Author’s Note, Boyne claims “[I]t is easy when one is far removed from a historical episode to claim that one would not have acted as others did, but it is far more difficult to show such basic humanity in the moment”. Do some research and find people in Gretel’s moment—the Holocaust—who didn’t stay quiet like Gretel. What motivated them to break the silence and shine a light on their family, friends, or neighbors’ actions?
7. Discuss All the Broken Places as a comment on the MeToo movement. How does Alex’s behavior reflect the behavior of men in the entertainment industry? How does the focus on the entertainment industry support claims that the MeToo movement is mostly concerned with women in well-off spaces? How does Gretel bring Alex to justice?
8. Henry reminds Gretel of her late brother, Bruno. What do Henry and Bruno have in common? How are their situations different?
9. Why does Gretel’s father take her inside the concentration camp? What does she learn? What doesn’t she understand? How does the visit support the claim that she didn’t know a genocide was occurring?
10. After Gretel tells the truth to David, he leaves. If Gretel told her truth to you, how would you react? Would you berate her like David, or would you stay friends with her? What factors might influence your choice?