The Boy In The Striped Pajamas: by John Boyne.

One knows about the topic before one begins the story, but this is a discovery of the history by an innocent boy he is living through, and one rediscovers the horrors of the fence and the inmates through the eyes, the mind of the boy on the other side of the fence. One experiences his thwarted need to explore, his wonder at the adults who cannot make up their minds about what work they wish to do for life, his trauma at his new friends being ill treated by the fearsome soldier, his shame at having been a coward, his penitence and his goodness of heart. But more than anything else one is petrified with a growing horror while the story proceeds inexorably towards the unthinkable, not believing someone would not stop it all and save the little eight year old and his friend in time, and then the total disbelief as the end arrives without any saviour at all, it is too late, both the boys and the men around them are shut in to perish. One keeps thinking, no, no, not the innocent boy, he did not deserve it too - all the while questioning and answering oneself, of course none of them deserved it, those that were there by design and not by a boyish mistake of ignorance, the boy in the striped pyjamas or his relatives or his ilk, either. And of course one has been horrified by all that for decades. But this one more, a little boy of eight, innocent of guilt and horror his people perpetrated on others, innocent of knowledge of any of it until it was too late, he did not deserve it, either. If only -

The picture is well rounded, too - the innocent mother with her good instincts who thanks the camp inmate for treating her son with his medical knowledge, the grandmother who would not visit, the soldier who is unwilling to lose his own life or report on his father, the girl who is young enough to be enamoured of the creed for all the wrong reasons, the father whose career might be affected by any discovery of his family not falling in line but who has to nevertheless give in on thought of his children and the effect of this atmosphere on them, and the end that perhaps only one of the family deserved being the perpetrator himself but certainly neither the mother nor the boy did.