This question can be answered by reading Chapter Four: "What They Saw Through the Window." The short answer to your question is that Bruno and Gretel see the Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz. Because the concentration camp is right across from the Commandant's house, the Commandant's two children are not protected from seeing the prisoners walking about behind the fence. Bruno and Gretel are confused.
There were small boys and big boys, fathers and grandfathers and perhaps a few uncles too. And some of those people who live on their own on everybody's road but don't seem to have any relatives at all. They were everyone.
They see "a nasty type of place" with what they think might be "modern types of houses" found on what they can only believe to be "the countryside." This is where Bruno gets the mistaken idea that the people behind the fence are farmers; however, Bruno wonders why there are no farm animals to be seen. Further, the two of them decide they can see hundreds of people, but that there must be thousands behind the fence.
And one final thought came into her brother's head as he watched the hundreds of people, ... all of them--were wearing the same clothes as each other: a pair of grey striped pajamas with a grey striped cap on their heads.
This quotation, of course, is where the title comes from. These "grey striped pajamas" are striking as the hundreds of people walk around inside the Auschwitz fence. These are the people that Gretel and Bruno see outside their window.
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