The Book Thief. By Markus Zusak

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak

Black Swan. First published 2005.

It is less about books and theft, than about a little girl growing up into young adulthood in Nazi Germany. Liesl is virtually orphaned when only about six, her communist father is imprisoned and probably killed by the newly 'elected' Nazi government; her mother, also a communist, is driven to give up little Liesl and her littler brother for adoption (The political opinions of the parents is implied, never explicitly stated). The brother, however, dies on the way to his foster parents, who live in a suburb of Munich. This event traumatizes Liesl and hangs over her every action and thought for the duration of the book. Liesl's new parents are a kindly old man and his tough and abrasive, but ultimately soft-hearted wife - a harsher version of Marilla Cuthbert of 'Anne of Green Gables'. As Liesl grows up she joins school, makes friends, especially Rudi - a boy who keeps pestering her for a kiss - and slowly learns to read. She steals a few books, though the acts described as thefts are not so really, they are more the taking of what no one needs, or, in one occasion, grabbing a book from the bonfire to which it has been consigned in a communal book-burning. 

Such events form the background of the story - the rise of Nazi Germany, Kristallnacht, book-burning, 'Heil Hitler', Hitler Jugend (into which Rudi and Liesl are conscripted without really knowing much about it), rationing and hunger, the 1936 Olympics and Jesse Owens (who unbelievably and exaggeratedly becomes Rudi's hero), World War II, Jew hunting, Jew killing and the Holocaust. Liesl herself is not Jewish, neither are her foster parents. They are bewildered by the discovery of the hatred borne by some of their neighbours and fellow-citizens towards others. They try their mite to stop it, but they are not heroes, and what they can do is very little. Until, one day, the son of an old acquaintance of theirs, a Jew, seeks shelter in their home as he flees the Gestapo. A major part of the book describes the consequent tensions and anxieties. For Liesl this is a strange and frightening, but also wonderful experience, as she learns to care for the refugee and make his cramped basement quarters as comfortable as possible. In the course of time, the Jewish refugee decides he cannot continue to be a dangerous burden on the family and simply goes away, only to be captured sometime later and sent to concentration camp. Rudi and Leisl’s parents die in the bombing of Munich. The war ends. Liesl and everyone else slowly pick up and re-knot the dropped and torn threads of their lives.

The book is soft teenage or young adult literature and the language is gentle. It uses the device of a personified ‘Death’ as the narrator. This is occasionally intrusive and irritating, but not enough to turn the reader off entirely. The language is ‘English’ English, though the characters, of course, would ‘actually’ speak German. There are occasional words (especially mild curse words) and sentences in German to embellish the ambience. The effect, on the whole, is quite pleasing.

The book falls squarely in the category of ‘Holocaust Literature’. There is now so much of this genre, not only books, but essays, movies, plays, and all varieties of media, that these descriptions do not any more evoke the same particular sense of shock and horror they did when I first read about them as a schoolboy. One of the problems in reading it in the context of present-day politics is that I am constantly brought up against the fact that most present-day Jews are rich and prosperous, and some them, the Zionists, visit upon others much the same evil that was visited upon them – consider the way Israel treats the Palestinians. There is also the fact that other genocides at other places and other, later, times have occurred and keep happening – Pol Pot in Cambodia, Stalinist Russia, Rwanda, Gujarat, Bangladesh, Iraq, Afghanistan, and on and on and on. And we now learn more and more about the horrors of American slavery, and the virtual extermination of the native peoples in America and Australia. So, while the Holocaust still remains for me the primary evil event in the world, it only just occupies the top spot. In any case, it cannot serve as any kind of reason or excuse for what Israel is doing. Zionist propaganda has however mostly succeeded in using this horror in just that way. The world is constantly exhorted ‘never to forget’ the Holocaust. We are allowed, even encouraged, however, to forget, and even forgive, Augusto Pinochet of Chile, for example.

‘The Book Thief’ is too slender a reed on which to lay the weighty charges of Zionist blindness to the sufferings of non-European people. However I do have the slight feeling that one of the unstated motives of the book is to expatiate some of the guilt of non-Jewish Germans, and to say, ‘Not all Germans were bad, or whole-hearted supporters of Hitler’s madness’. And while this undoubtedly true, this line of argument could eventually lead to the world forgetting the actual Holocaust, and re-imagining it as evil perpetrated by liberals and communists, who in the present day happen to be dark-skinned.