![]() ![]() On-screen, Liesel wears the swastika on her school uniform without thought, and the children play soccer beneath Nazi flags. “But they knew it was ultimately for a good cause.” “We had to teach the choir to sing the song, because they had never heard this before,” Percival says. Despite the emotional difficulty in performing the lyrics, the choir agreed because it felt the educational message was vital, he adds. Percival had to receive government permission to perform the song on the German set since it, and any other songs or symbols pertaining to the Third Reich, are banned in the country. But the point is, Liesel doesn’t really understand.” “But when you see the translation of the words, it’s just horrific. “It’s a song that sounds so beautiful,” Percival says. ![]() The scene’s eeriness is enhanced by the stunning arrangement performed by a German children’s choir. The main character, foster child Liesel (played by 13-year-old Sophie Nélisse), assimilates in a German school where she happily sings a Hitler Youth song with her classmates without comprehending the anti-Semitic lyrics. They can’t define what’s right and wrong at that age.” An entire generation of children really believed they were part of something really good and fun. “This film is about the corruption of innocence. “We as an audience know what the symbols and rhetoric of the time truly mean, and it’s uncomfortable to see,” says the film’s director, Brian Percival. The story focuses on children who unknowingly accept the daily images of Adolf Hitler’s prewar Germany - from the Hitler Youth uniforms to the swastikas on the flags - as normal, even enjoyable, before learning their true nature. Nazi Germany is a challenging setting for a coming-of-age story, but that’s the case with Markus Zusak’s popular novel “The Book Thief ,” which was turned into the film.
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