I just rented and watched "The Boy in The Striped Pajamas" last night. Yes it is finally out on DVD and I found it by accident at my local rental place while looking for a completely different kind of movie. So I rented this one instead and took it home to watch it with some trepidation. I won't go into a long description of the movie, but for those who don't know, it is about a young 8 year old boy who is the son of a high ranking Nazi officer durring WW2. The officer is put in charge of a concentration camp and must move himself and his family to the housing facility outside of the camp. Eventually the young boy becomes bored with noone to play with, so he decides to explore the "farm" near thier new home. He meets another young boy on the other side of the electrified barbed wire fence at the camp, an 8 year old Jewish boy, and they become friends. One day the Jewish boy's father turns up missing, and the German boy decides to dig under the fence and help him look for him. I won't go any further to spoil the ending for anyone, but it dosen't take too much imagination too figure out how this movie ends.

What surprised me at first was that I didn't cry at the end. Well, I was kind of surprised but I did kind of set myself up for it by trying to not get too emotionally involved with the characters...yeah, right! I went to bed and when I woke up in the middle of the night, I couldn't go back to sleep to save myself. And all day long today at work too; I just kept thinking about those two boys and what happened to them and to millions of Jews durring that war. It made me so sad and angry and I just kept wondering what I would have done, or could have done to help them if I had been alive durring that time. In other words, that movie REALLY made me think. In other words, it is quite the effective movie.

Anyway, I started to think about what is going on today in the world and I realized that there is another kind of Holocaust going on. There is a terrible world-wide problem with hunger going on and it is estimated that one billion people suffer from this problem today. About 24,000 people die every day from hunger-related causes. This number is actually down from 35,000 ten years ago and 41,000 twenty years ago, but in my opinion, if the number was only one, it would be too many. So I am doing a little research online to try and find out how a person can help because my conscience won't let me do any less. I have found a few interesting websites, one of which has a thing that you can click on and when you do, sponsers will pay for food. It's completely free, all you have to do is click on the thing. here is the address:

http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1

That is but one site that I have found so far. In short, I have been humbled by a movie and now I feel I must try to do something to help the people and the poor children who are caught up in another kind of Holocaust. See the movie and please consider helping those who are in need. Go to the website and click to help...it's free.

Chris