THE BOOK THIEF
Author:
Markus Zusak
Publisher: Pan McMillan, Australia, 2005.
Read from the blurb of the book: “It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become
busier still.”
Ah well, I said to myself, another Jews
story, in the line of The Schindler’s List, The Pianist etc… Which reminds me of my good German friend
Manfred. He’s a gentleman, in the usual
sense we understand, and in the literal meaning of a gentle, soft speaking,
decent soul. Once, he said to me: “Yes, during that time, Germany under Hitler
did unspeakable evil, but the country never lacks of decent people, and ever
since we try our damnedest that nothing of the sort ever happen again. Why even now, a book, a movie crop up to
point a finger at us again and again?”
I certainly understand Manfred’s feeling,
but I also understand the general sentiment of “Lest we forget”.
Markus Zusak’s book certainly illustrates
Manfred’s point: during the fever of
Hitler’s Nazi years, plenty of decent people stood up: Hans Hubermann, painter, refused to join the
Party, kept his promise and hid a Jew in his home. Once during a Jews parade on the street, he
couldn’t help to pick up and feed a fallen Jew prisoner, and was whipped and
spat upon by the soldiers, his own countrymen.
There was Alex Steiner, tailor, pure blood
German, with his “contradictory politics” such as “his family, surely he had to
do whatever he could to support them, if that means being in the Party, it
meant being in the Party”, “he did not hate the Jews, or anyone else for that
matter”. And like Hans, at crucial
moment stood up and refused to let his son Rudy go to that elite Nazi school
and was sent to war front as punishment.
There was Michael Holtzapfel, patriot soldier,
hero back from the Russian front, who hanged himself, because he was “worn down
by the guilt of living”, while around him his brother, his comrades, his
countrymen, the Jews, were dying horrific and senseless deaths.
And there were our two main characters,
Liesel, Hans’ daughter, and Rudy, Alex’s son.
Read from the Internet: Markus Zusak is a very young author of children books. The Book Thief is his first attempt to write
for adults.
But, as we see, his main characters are
still children, teenagers actually. And
I totally agree with his choice – only children, with their pure heart, without
adults’ baggage of compromises, can see straight to the core of things.
Rudy Steiner, “beautiful blond hair and
big, safe blue eyes”, couldn’t understand his father’s contradictory politics;
couldn’t understand why he couldn’t admire Jesse Owens, the black athlete
champion of Hitler’s Olympics; couldn’t understand why he had to know by heart
the Fuhrer’s birthday, then refused to do so systematically, to the point of
being bashed regularly by the leader of his Nazi Youth Group. Later on he followed Hans’ footstep in
feeding the starving Jews in the street with his own bread ration. It was him who put his sister’s teddy bear
next to a dying enemy pilot to comfort him.
Liesel, our book thief, started as an
illiterate little girl, learned to read with her beloved Papa Hans, fell in
love with words and books and subsequently stealing them. With all the
suffering around her everyday world, she realised “words” had allowed Hitler to
heckle and push the world to madness, and she fell out of love with them. But still words and books were her comfort during
that harsh time where food was low, where bomb raids happened often, when her
father was sent to war. She read to
comfort her neighbours during raid time in the communal bomb shelter. “The
night was long with bombs and reading.
Her mouth was dry, but the book thief worked through fifty four
pages.” What a horrifying, yet
fascinating way of measuring time.
Liesel had only a short happy time with her
family when her injured father was sent home.
Then one night her whole neighbourhood was bombed, everyone died, her
papa and mama, her best friend and sweetheart Rudy, everyone… She survived
because she was reading in the basement.
The chapter where she mourned her loved
ones made me cry for days. And I firmly
believe Liesel ‘s sufferings in her outside world were as harrowing as her
counterpart Anne Frank’s inside her
hiding walls. Somehow a decent little German
girl had paid her debt to a little Jew girl.
Yes, Markus Zusak’s book is a beautiful and
gripping read – lest we forget!
Thanh
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