Reflection On The Book Thief

When I first started the novel The Book Thief, I was somewhat skeptical on whether or not I would learn or take away many things from the story, since I already know a lot from that time period. I have family members that have been in combat and my father is a war history buff, but it turned out that I learned a ton from the story. One thing that I learned was that the German soldiers were willing to whip and beat up a fourteen-year-old girl, just because she was talking to a Jew. This was demonstrated later on in the novel when Liesel finally finds Max when he is walking to Dachau and she runs up to him and starts to talk to him. The German soldiers pull her out of the group of starving Jews, but she runs back in, but then they pull

her out again and whip both her and Max. Leisel willing to get whipped, so she can talk to her friend shows that she is a very strong-willed and powerful individual. Another thing that I learned from reading The Book Thief, was that they had a group in the army that was only supposed to clean up and help towns during and after air raids. I thought that just random groups of soldiers that were nearby or were called did the clean up. A final thing that I learned from the novel was that the german people hated Communist and everyone that had to do with communism. The story led you to believe that Liesel’s father may have been killed because he was a communist. Liesel also remembers hearing her mother use the word communism and her fate was unknown.