Nazi Germany was a cruel and unfair place to everyone living there, for fear of persecution and just fear in general spread through the nation like a wildfire. People were murdered in the streets, packed into ghettos and cattle cars, thrown into fires to burn alive, gassed in chambers, and essentially treated worse than animals. So, from this, it is not hard to see why people living in Germany at this time learned to conform to Hitler’s standards, for that was what they had to do in order to survive. Markus Zusak, author of the book, expresses his own view of conformity and individuality through the characters he created. An example of this is Liesel and her family, and they believed in expressing their individuality and doing what they knew was right and honorable. They refused…show more content… In the beginning Liesel begins to piece some facts together about what has happened. She becomes aware that Hitler is the one responsible for the bad things happening to her and to others, and she learns to think for herself instead of following along in the mold that Hitler has put them all in. After this realization she says “I hate the Fuhrer. I hate him,” (pg 115) clearly displaying her resistance to conform and her opinion of their leader. The uniqueness of the Hubermann family soon infected their friends along the street, mainly the Steiners. Because the two families were connected through their children, they spent time together and a lot of ideas and beliefs become shared, if they weren’t already. This can be seen in pages 407-411 when Rudy Steiner was to be sent off to a special school that would educate the highest ranking boys from all over the country. There he would be physically pushed to the limit, and essentially brainwashed into following Hitler’s every command. Because Alex and Barbara Steiner knew this, they refused and were eventually punished for
