This statement portraits perfectly what the novel is about. Bruno, feeling very lonely, starts exploring the area around the house - though he is not allowed to do so at all, "With No Exceptions". Bruno had already seen from his window that a group of male humans were living on the other side of  a fence. One day he reaches the fence and meets another boy, called Shmuel. He is wearing striped pyjamas which, just as the armband with the star on it and the boy's name and the fact that both boys were born on the same day, April 15, 1934, surprises Bruno.

The two boys start talking, and especially Bruno appears quite unknowing. He does not know about Concentration Camps, the Holocaust and the Final Solution. Only does he seem to be happy to have found a "friend" right in the middle of what had appeared to him as nowhere. Divided by a fence, two boys are making friends who were, from the ideological point of view of that time, not supposed to meet or talk or even stay close together. In their innocent way, the two children demonstrate that their is no "real" difference between them seeing them simply as human beings who can be friends - with the exception that Shmuel is marked as a Jew and has an uncertain future, maybe non at all. Bruno does not know about the ideology of the "Nationalsozialismus", thus encounters Shmuel open-mindedly and does not realize any difference between them. This points out quite clearly that the whole ideology was not based on any real evidence - and explains the statement " in a world of ignorance".

The pictures are taken from the film that had been produced on the basis of the book.