Brief Summary Of The Book Thief By Hans Hubermann

In the last quarter of the book, Nazi soldiers arrive at Rudy’s house to talk to his parents about taking Rudy to a special Nazi training school because of his athletic and intellectual abilities. They refuse, and in turn, Rudy’s father must join the army in his place. Hans Hubermann is also drafted to the German army because of his actions weeks before in which he gave a Jewish prisoner a piece of bread, although this reasoning is not indicated in the letter. His wife and foster child are devastated and Rosa even spends her nights clutching his accordion to her chest whilst Liesel watches from the doorway. As Hans is serving in the Air Raid Special Unit in Essen, parades of Jews continue through Molching. Liesel watches each face every time
a parade comes around in hopes of finding Max. One night, after reading out loud in the shelter during another air raid, Rosa hands Liesel a book entitled, “The Word Shaker,” a collection of stories and drawings written by Max for Liesel.

Meanwhile, Hans avoids death once again by chance as a young man, Reinhold Zucker, takes a disliking to Hans and takes his seat on the truck. A tire blows out and the truck swerves and rolls over. Zucker is the only one to have died in the crash whilst the rest of the men were only injured. Hans broke his leg and writes to his family that he is going to return home for a week before working in an office in Munich. Liesel continues to read to Frau Holtzapfel that is overcome with grief after learning that her youngest son had died from her eldest son, Michael, that has since returned home. After another air raid, the residents of Molching leave the shelter to find a dying pilot in a burning plane in the forest. Rudy puts a teddy bear on the pilot’s shoulder and the pilot whispers a word of thanks right before Death carries his soul away.

In part ten of the book, Death reveals that in a few months, Himmel Street will be bombed and the only one to survive will be Liesel Meminger, but for now the narrator describes the events leading up to the bombing. Liesel’s life is mostly peaceful with the exception of the discovery of Michael Holtzapfel’s body hanging from a rope in a laundry and of course the parades of Jews. Eventually, as Liesel is scanning the faces of each Jew in a parade, she spots Max. She runs out to him and he tells her that he was caught by the Nazis halfway to Stuttgart. Liesel is unable to think of any words to say and instead quotes lines from, “The Word Shaker,” to Max before he is forced to continue walking with the rest of the prisoners and Liesel is taken off the road by Rudy before another solider whips her again. After this experience, Liesel remains in her bed for three days before she knocks on Rudy’s door to reveal the secret about Max she had been keeping for years.

Liesel visits the mayor’s library one last time to read a book when she is in a state of pain after seeing Max and feeling as she could not do anything to help him.
She begins ripping the book apart out of anger and she leaves the mayor’s wife a note that says that she will not be visiting anymore and thanking her for everything. A few days later, the mayor’s wife knocks on the door of the Hubermann household and gives Liesel a blank book for Liesel to write her stories in. She begins to spend almost every night in the basement writing a story entitled, “The Book Thief,” which is all about her life since she has arrived in Molching. On the night where she had finished her story and had begun revising it is when the bombs arrived and killed everyone one the street except for herself because the basement had been low enough for her to survive and the sirens had come too late to warn the residents. After Liesel is rescued, she finds Rudy’s dead body and kisses him goodbye before she discovers her foster parents’ lifeless bodies on the ground. She tells her mama that she looked so beautiful holding the accordion when Hans was away and tells her papa that no one can play it the way he can. As she is escorted away from the bodies, she leaves her book behind and it is thrown in the garbage by one of the workers. Death states that he was glad he was there so that he could grab the
book.

In the epilogue, the mayor and his wife take Liesel in and she says a final goodbye to Rudy at the river in which he rescued her book for her. Rudy’s father comes back from the war and re-opens his tailor shop and Liesel spends most of her time with him. In 1945, Max comes to visit the shop and Liesel and him cry in each other’s arms. Death explains that Liesel passes away at an old age in her home in Sydney and he walks with her and shows her the book that she had dropped on Himmel Street all those years ago. They talk and Death says that he is unable to understand humans, and his last lines of the book are, “I am haunted by humans.”