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“When did you arrive at Out-With?” asked Bruno. Pavel put the carrot and the peeler down for a few moments and thought about it. “I think I’ve always been here,” he said finally in a quiet voice.
This exchange between Bruno and Pavel appears in Chapter 7, and it marks the first time the two characters speak to each other directly. Bruno had seen Pavel around the house prior to this conversation, and he thought the older man was just another house servant, like Maria. Earlier this same day, Lieutenant Kotler had ordered Pavel to help Bruno locate a spare tire for a tire swing, but the two characters did not have a real chance to interact until Bruno hurt himself in an accident on his new swing. Pavel saw Bruno fall from his position near the kitchen window where he peeled vegetables for the family’s dinner. Since no other adults were at home, Pavel rushed out of the house himself, picked Bruno up, and brought him to back to the kitchen. There, Pavel located a first aid kit and patched up Bruno’s scrape. Bruno worried that he might die from his wounds, but Pavel assured Bruno he’d survive. Pavel was a doctor before coming to Out-With, so he knew what he was talking about. Confused about why a doctor would be peeling vegetables, Bruno asked when Pavel had come to Out-With.
Pavel’s response that he’d always been at Out-With made little sense to Bruno. However, the reader with a general understanding of European history can interpret Pavel’s comment as referring to the fact that a bias against Jewish people existed in Europe long before the Nazis came along. This bias against Jewish people is also known by the term anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism has a long and complex history in Europe. Thus, when the leaders of Nazi Germany formulated their plan to exterminate European Jews, they drew on an already established tradition of scapegoating Jews for problems they did not cause. As an elderly Jewish man, Pavel fully understood Europe’s long history of anti-Semitism. Indeed, he had personally suffered abuse from anti-Semites his entire life. For this reason he told Bruno that he’d always been at Out-With. The horrific atrocities committed at Out-With and other concentration camps may appear extreme, but for Pavel these camps merely symbolize European anti-Semitism taken to its logical conclusion. Since he has lived in the shadow of anti-Semitism his whole life, he has, in a sense, always been imprisoned in some version of Out-With.
