Brexit, 'The Book Thief' and the lessons from history

The books you take on your summer break can transport you away from the woes you have left behind. But that did not work for me.

After months of bruising debate on Europe and the referendum – ultimately won, I believe, on a platform of xenophobia and bigotry - I decided to take a short break to Spain. But, even under a sun-drenched Andalucian sky it didn’t take long to be thrust back to ramifications of Brexit and the yet-to-be-seen unintended consequences of what Europe might now become.

The source of my anxiety came in the shape of one of my getaway books I’d decided to read. It wasn’t the hilarious Jonas Jonasson’s ‘The Hundred Year old man climbed out of a window and escaped’ - which I read in no time at all.

It was, rather, the beautiful yet unsettling read of Markus Zusak’s, ‘The Book Thief’, which was an altogether difference proposition.

Zusak’s book quickly dragged me back into the EU debate, not least in the similarities I saw with a society that you think you know and understand, but which can change right in front of your eyes, in ways that are difficult to believe, much less comprehend.

Zusak’s exquisitely written tale is about a German girl - Liesel Meminger - whose mother had to abandon her with foster parents in the town of Molching, in the late 1930s. The almost illiterate ten year girl starts a new school in the town where Hitler’s Nazi ideology was being enthusiastically embraced. But it is at home where she learns to read from her foster father, who privately hates Hitler and who hides a German Jew in their house.

What is compelling about the early part of the story is just how quick neighbourhoods, society and an entire nation can so rapidly and radically change, from one of mutual ethnic respect to the horrors of man’s worst inhumanity.

Of course, we are light years away from a Europe and a world that might implode upon itself in this way.

But books like this are there to remind us that, given the right circumstances, everything can change, and not always for the best.

At a time of great uncertainty we’d do well to be better understand the genesis of the European Union which, according to the founding fathers, was to ensure that neighbouring countries no longer engaged in wars.

Instead they would create a mechanism that would engender mutual economic and political interest.

It was only a few short years after the end of the Second World War that the first bold step in this direction was taken, with the establishing of a common agreement between six countries on the production of coal and steel. Here was enshrined that vital principle that has guided the European project ever since: building on what unites, rather than divides, countries.

The Book Thief eloquently lays bare the cancer of division spewed by Nazi propaganda, which taught, simply, ‘if you are not like us, you are against us’.

In one particularly poignant episode, Liesel’s soon-to-be-best friend Ruddy Steiner seeks to emulate his hero, the black Olympian, Jesse Owens. So he paints himself totally black, with charcoal, and goes alone to the local stadium to create Owens’ gold medal winning run.

His father finds him there and confronts him. “Why did you do it?” he asks. “I was being Jesse Owens...the black magic”, his son replies. He is told: “Son, you can’t go around being black they’ll take you away, you shouldn’t want to be black or Jewish or anyone who isn’t us.”

And there it was in that moment, the essence of Nazism ideology: ‘the other’ is so bad they can simply, and quickly, become the enemy.

Fast forward almost 80 years and some leaders and religious extremist are trying to bring back that same message.

In these global times of insecurity and uncertainty we should be demanding from our leader’s greater unity, not division. Instead some are pandering to it. Worse still we don’t know where it will all end.

Russia’s President Putin at times prowls like a bee-stung grizzly bear; the sane world collectively holds it breath as to whether or not America will elect an unpredictable demagogue to the White House; huge swathes of the Middle East and North Africa continue in utter turmoil, with desperate refugees heading for the relative sanctuary of Europe; and Muslim extremist who care little for their own lives or those of their enemies – anyone who isn’t them – seek to wreak havoc on our doorsteps.

And what is our response in the UK and in other parts of mainland Europe? Division, implosion.

In spite of the referendum result, we must resolutely show Europe and the world that we are positive about being Europeans, united in shared prosperity and unity of values, that we stand together in confronting the global challenges.

Without active citizenship the disintegration of everything we value can too quickly fall apart. A combination of deceitful and malign dynamics coupled with a complacent society is all we need to sleep walk into something altogether much darker.

We owe to the millions who perished in humanities darkest history, to learn the lessons of division, blame and hatred, which have been so movingly told in works like The Book Thief.

The original article was written for the new publication - The New European http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/home

Simon Woolley