Page 480 - The Book Thief

WAY OF THE WORDS

It happened in a small town of Hitlers heartland.

The flow of more suffering was pumped nicely out, and a small piece of it had
now arrived.

Jews were being marched through the outskirts of Munich, and one teenage girl
somehow did the unthinkable and made her way through to walk with them.
When the soldiers pulled her away and threw her to the ground, she stood up
again. She continued.

The morning was warm.

Another beautiful day for a parade.

The soldiers and Jews made their way through several towns and were arriving
now in Molching. It was possible that more work needed to be done in the camp,
or several prisoners had died. Whatever the reason, a new batch of fresh, tired
Jews was being taken on foot to Dachau.

As she always did, Liesel ran to Munich Street with the usual band of onlookers.

Heil Hitler!

She could hear the first soldier from far up the road and made her way toward
him through the crowd, to meet the procession. The voice amazed her. It made
the endless sky into a ceiling just above his head, and the words bounced back,
landing somewhere on the floor of limping Jewish feet.

Their eyes.

They watched the moving street, one by one, and when Liesel found a good
vantage point, she stopped and studied them. She raced through the files of face
after face, trying to match them to the Jew who wrote The Standover Man and
The Word Shaker.