Symbolism In The Book Thief

While The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, offers a limited representation of the Second World War, one that is tied to death camps and Auschwitz specifically, The Book Thief zooms out to reflect how the war took its toll on Germany.
The Book Thief is a story narrated by Death, about a young girl, Liesel, an accordionist, Hans, a Jewish fist-fighter, Max, and some other Germans, during the Second World War.
The novel takes place in a small fictional town in Germany, Molching, specifically on Himmel Street. This fictional setting is therefore a microcosm for Germany as a whole, to symbolize how Germany itself was affected by the war. For instance, in Molching, the food starts getting less and less, until people found themselves getting hungrier, an image that is also represented in All The Light We Cannot See and Al-Masabeh Al-Zurq. Readers can also see the effect of the war on income and jobs within this novel. For instance, Rosa’s customers are decreasing as the war goes on, as they can no longer afford to pay her, even the relatively richer ones, like the Mayor’s wife. These two images symbolize how the situation was getting even worse for Germany itself during the war, and how the war not only affected the country politically and socially, but also financially.
If the town is a microcosm for Germany, therefore its characters represent larger groups that existed in Germany during that time. For instance, Drau Filler, one of the characters living on Himmel Street, symbolize