A tale of two photos

Both images have been scanned from The Hindu Sunday Magazine section.  The top photo illustrates Nirmala Lakshman’s review article on  fiction  set  in Nazi Germany –  The Boy in Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne.  Billed as young adult fiction,  the book essays  a  relationship between two nine-year-olds,  placed on either side of  the barbed-wire  fence at Auschwitz  –  a relationship of innocence,  between a loved child of the Nazi Commandant and a Jewish  age-mate on the wrong  side of the wire,  wearing the  striped  pyjamas.
No less touching is the  photo-2 , of children in Gaza,  that illustrates  an article on the plight of Palestinian young ones under economic blockade of Gaza by Israel.
The two images,  from two different  generations ,  have a running  theme –  of  strife, sufferings and oppression.  And the  thread in the two situations are the Jews.  Irony is the oppressed race  in the earlier generation plays  oppressors in the subsequent one.  Maybe someone would  come up  with a sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas,  another young adult  fiction  featuring nine-year-olds,  of another generation, in another land –   an Israeli and a Palastinian in Gaza;   ‘to jolt readers of all ages’ , if  I could nick that phrase from  Ms Lakshman’s  review article.