After Bruno had entered the camp disguised as an inmate to help Shmuel find his father, they were ordered on what Shmuel believed was a march. They were marched into a room. When Bruno was trying to recall his friends’ faces back in Berlin when they moved over a year ago to no avail, he said “‘Actually,’ he said, looking down at Shmuel, ‘it doesn’t matter whether I do or don’t. They’re not my best friends any more anyway.’ He looked down and did something quite out of character for him: he took hold of Shmuel’s tiny hand in his and squeezed it tightly. ‘You’re my best friend, Shmuel,’ he said. ‘My best friend for life.’ Shmuel may well have opened his mouth to say something back, but Bruno never heard it because at that moment there was a loud gasp from all the marchers who had filled the room, as the door at the front was suddenly closed and a loud metallic sound rang through from the outside. Bruno raised an eyebrow, unable to make sense of all this, but he assumed that it had something to do with keeping the rain out and stopping people from catching colds. And then the room went very dark and somehow, despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel’s hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let it go.” (pgs 213 & 214) Then, the chapter ends, with the immediate consecutive sentence(In the last chapter) saying that no one ever heard from Bruno again. There is sufficient evidence in this quote to conclude that Bruno was gased or cremated afterwards, no one knowing that he was really the son of a Nazi commandant.
Bruno was born to a father with Nazi origins, and though he was so different from Shmuel in terms of circumstances, they really were not too different in person. The fact that Bruno and Shmuel could bond so intimately means that really no barriers, even barriers to knowing, could stop two people from showing love for each other. Even at the last moment, Bruno believed the chamber was to prevent people from getting sick by being too cold from the rain, and yet they still held hands and nothing would have persuaded him to let it go. That same kind of feeling might be felt between a mother and a child during an earthquake, or two sisters in a shooting, the close bonding that happens between people who are different but not in person when it boils down to the heart of humanity: People need each other. It shows how much Bruno and Shmuel have in common with each other, even though their opinions, conditions, appearance, and other aspects have been manipulated by their environment, and how they are able to connect with each other, like they gradually and always have since they met, the bridge to each other, leading all the way up to the climax of their connection to each other as humans. The fence was taken down between Shmuel(A jew, deemed bad) and Bruno(a “proper” German, deemed good) when they had begun opening their worlds to each other since they met, but it was really taken down in this last moment. Bruno, though similar in circumstances to his friends in Berlin, were pretty different in person in being that they didn’t really need each other. They were casual friends. In times of human struggle and pain, Bruno alleviated Shmuel as Shmuel did to Bruno. How did humans survive the dark, cold, dangerous, unpredictable NIGHTS in the ancient times when we had nothing but ourselves? With each other, no matter their origins.