Hans Junior accuses his father Hans of being a coward for not supporting Hitler, yet in Nazi Germany, it would take much more bravery to defy Hitler and defend the Jews than it would to go along with Nazi ideology. Hans lived through World War I by not going into battle on the day everyone else in his regiment died; he repays Erik, the man who saved his life, by hiding Erik's son Max in his basement during World War II. The punishment for being found with a hidden Jew was certain death. Before the war, Hans brought scrutiny upon him and ruined his business by painting over anti-Semitic slurs written on Jewish-owned houses and shops.
When he sees Jews being marched through town on their way to a concentration camp, Hans gives an old Jew a piece of bread and is whipped by a soldier for doing so. After that incident, Hans anticipates the secret police taking him away; when he sees two Nazis wearing black trenchcoats on his street, Hans even runs out and tells them that it's him they want.Hans regrets giving the Jew a piece of bread because of the potentially disastrous consequences of this deed, but Liesel, impressed by Hans' bravery, tries to reassure him. Liesel and Rudy also give bread to a group of Jews. Later, when Liesel sees Max among a group being sent to Dachau, she defies the Nazi soldiers by latching onto Max and is as well whipped for doing so. These small, individual acts of bravery and defiance in the face of popular Nazi fervor are mostly symbolic. Yet the failure of Germans who doubted Hitler's intentions or were horrified by the Nazis' inhumanity to speak up in the 1930s helped bring about Hitler's rise to power and complete domination of the social, military, and political machinery of the nation. To publicly defy the Nazis after Hitler's rise would require bravery of suicidal proportions.at a Jew would never be able to beat Hitler, yet he still trains and pracAbandonment and Survivor's GuiltIn the prologue, Death explains that it is not the dead, but the heartbroken survivors of the dead that it cannot stand to look at. Different characters treat abandonment and guilt in different ways. Michael Holtzapfel survives the Battle of Stalingrad, but is unable to stand his guilt over living when his brother Robert died and ultimately commits suicide. Ilsa Hermann becomes a quiet, sullen woman after her only son is killed in 1918, yet Liesel brings her happiness and she urges Liesel not to make the same mistake she did by suffering for the rest of her life.In World War I, Hans' friend Erik Vandenberg saves Hans' life by volunteering him for a written assignment on the day everyone in the regiment is sent into battle. Erik dies, and Hans feels guilty over Erik's death because Erik had a young son: Hans transmutes this guilt into a promise to help Erik's widow and ultimately saves the life of Erik's son Max. Max too feels guilty over leaving his family to hide from the Nazis. For him, the price of living "guilt and shame."Death describes Liesel as the "perpetual survivor": she loses her mother, brother, Hans, Rosa, and Rudy, among others. Liesel is traumatized over the death of her younger brother and the realization that her mother has been persecuted by the Nazis. Liesel initially feels abandoned because her mother gave her up for adoption; she later realizes that her mother did this out of love, to save her daughter's life. After seeing Max be sent to a concentration camp, Liesel is able to turn her despair into writing the story of her own life. At the end of the novel, Death remarks that Liesel has experienced both beauty and brutality, suggesting that Liesel was ultimately able to come to terms with the fact that the human condition necessarily involves both suffering and happiness after having experienced extreme versions of both.When he