Introduction to The Book Thief

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Introduction to The Book Thief
ENG 2D Novel Study
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A Quick Overview

• A story set in Germany during WWII
• Captures the life of a normal young girl growing
  up during such a time
• Has won numerous awards and was on the New York
  Times Best Seller list for over 190 weeks!
• Written by Australian author Markus Zusak

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Important Characters
Death A supernatural being who serves as the
narrator. He is very busy carrying away the
souls of mankind after they have died and sees
the world through colour. It is apparent that he
has done this job for millennia and as he watches
over Liesel we get a sense of his struggle to
understand mankinds capacity for good and evil.
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• Liesel Meminger
• Is the book thief
• Forced to live with foster parents in Munich
  Germany at the onset of WWII
• When she learns to read she begins stealing books
  whenever possible.
• Max Vandenburg
• A 23 year-old Jew
• Father served with Liesels foster-father
  during WWI.
• Hides in their basement and develops a
  friendship with Liesel

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Hans Hubermann Liesels foster father who is a
tall, gentle man with compassion and bravery that
Liesel admires. It is Hans who teaches Liesel to
read and soothes her from her endless
nightmares. Rosa Hubermann A stern woman who
has a kind heart but does not show it as often or
as softly as her husband. Rudy Steiner An
amusing character the same age as Liesel who
regularly requests kisses from Liesel. He
becomes Liesels partner in crime.
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Setting

• In 1923, Hitler and his supporters were
  concentrated in Munich
• It became a Nazi stronghold when Hitler became
  dictator in 1933

Adolf Hitler in Munich Germany, Nov. 1933

• A group of Munich University students formed a
  resistance movement in 1942 majority were
  caught and executed
• The city was heavily damaged by allied bombing
  during World War IIthe city was hit by 71 air
  raids over a period of six years.

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Dachau
First concentration camp, Dachau, was 16 km
north-west of Munich
April, 1945 the US assaulted the outskirts of
Munich, liberating Dachau concentration camp in
the process
Was a concentration camp for 12 years and
recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners.
Approximately 32,000 prisoners were liberated in
1945
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Historical ContextAdolf Hitler

• Was born in 1889, dreamed of being an artist and
  left school to pursue this dream
• At 18, went to Vienna to study art but was not
  accepted to Vienna Academy of Fine Arts
• Was unemployed for the next 5 years
• His time in Vienna he became influenced by Karl
  Laager Mayor of Vienna

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• Karl was anti-Semitic, meaning to have hatred or
  hostility towards Jews
• Hitlers hatred for Communists and Jews began to
  develop, he moved to Munich and enlisted in the
  Germany army
• He served as a messenger in the army, was
  honoured with Iron Cross twice for his bravery

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• Was devastated by German defeat and returned home
  blaming the Jews and Communists
• After the war he became involved in politics and
  discovered that he was a gifted public speaker

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Political Career

• In 1920 he joined the National Socialist German
  Workers Party (Nazis)
• In 1923 tried to take over the government in a
  revolt in Munich it failed and he was sent to
  jail but gained him nationwide attention

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• While in jail he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle)
  and set out his belief that the German, or Aryan,
  race was superior to all, especially the Jews

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Belief of Aryan Race

• Hitler identified Jews as a race, not as a
  religious group
• He claimed that the Aryan race had to be kept
  pure and become superior to the rest of the world
• To be kept pure, he claimed that the superior
  race need room to livealone
• The book was dismissed, few recognized the threat
  the book posed to Jews and all of Europe
• No one thought it possible for him to carry out
  such ideasbut the conditions in Germany proved
  otherwise

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Depression

• The German people had been humiliated by the
  surrender of WWI. The Treaty of Versailles was a
  peace treaty signed at the end of WWI and
  required Germany to
• Accept responsibility for the war
• Disarm
• Renounce power over substantial territory
• Pay damages equivalent to 442 Billion (Final
  payments were made Oct. 2010, 92 years later!)

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Germany After WWI

• Germany was ruined, their currency was worthless
  and the country plunged into deepest recession
  ever
• 15 million were unemployed, desperately poor, and
  the government had no solution- they needed a
  saviour
• This was Hitlers chance to get into power
  without using force his powerful speeches played
  on their hopes and fears and blamed Communists
  and Jews for the German hardships
• The masses were inspired by his message of a
  master race bound for Aryan dominance

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Germany under Hitlers Reign

• Nazis gained enough seats by spreading lies about
  opposing parties, bullying voters and promising
  to save Germany
• The media was taken over to ensure Hitlers image
  was built up and to vilify Jews

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Humiliation

• Hitler united an entire nation to turn against
  the enemy
• All Jews, even those who had fought in WWI, were
  made to wear the yellow Star of David
• They were picked on, businesses were boycotted,
  shops were vandalized, propaganda was designed to
  emphasize their inferiority, synagogues were
  burned and homes were looted

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• They created ghetto areas where they imprisoned
  Jews
• Gypsies, homosexuals, and the handicapped were
  also persecuted

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Life in the Ghetto

• Ghettos were terribly overcrowded
• No sanitation
• No clean water
• No heat
• Scarcely any food
• Disease killed many
• Many died of starvation while their loved ones
  watched helplessly

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Someones father
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Someones mother
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Someones child
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Someones brother
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While Hitler was invading other countries,
his army started to take back their ghettos
One by one, the Jews living in the ghettos were
rounded up and sent to concentration camps
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The Final Solution

• Senior officials did not openly talk about
  genocide, however, plans were carried out to
  install poison-gas chambers in what came to be
  known as death camps

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Inside Concentration Camps

• Worked, sometimes to death, separated from
  family, at the will of soldiers
• Little food, starvation was common

• Josef Mengele notorious for cruel experiments
  using children attempting to find the genetic
  formula ensuring Aryan women gave birth to
  blonde, blue-eyed children

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• Six death camps located in rural locations close
  to a railway line so that cattle cars could
  transport deportees from ghettos to the gas
  chambers

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Heroes of the Holocaust

• Oskar Schindler
• Supported the Nazi movement until all the
  kindergarten children in a local ghetto
  disappeared
• Owned a factory that provided the German army
  with supplies
• Asked to secure a workforce of Jews to stay at
  his factory.
• Treated them well, offered them protection
• When the war ended he had rescued 1,200 Jews

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Heroes of the Holocaust

• Frank Foley
• British spy working in the British Passport
  office in Berlin
• Issued false visas to enable German Jews to leave
  the country
• Estimated that he saved 10,000 Jews

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Heroes of the Holocaust

• Chiune Sugihara
• Japanese Consul-General issued thousands of visas
  to Jews fleeing Nazi occupied Poland
• Began spending 1820 hours a day when his order
  to leave was issued
• Was still writing visas while in transit from his
  hotel and after boarding the train, throwing
  visas out the train window to desperate refugees.