Had a sneak preview of some parts of this a while back and wow it's turned into something really intense. The backing is quite "nice" and the story really isn't. The pyjamas part is my favourite. Tragic.
I'm in two minds over whether we need to know the back story or not - part of me thinks it would be very powerful to make it very obvious who we're talking about here, but the way you have it, there could be a lot of different stories, which is also super-interesting and engaging.
Waving your life goodbye, there's something really self-destructive there, some kind of resignation to danger, a great theme and surely apt for those in that type of situation...