Oh wow! Someone asked me if they should bother reading this (whilst I was still reading it) because they'd heard that the ending was horrible. Which is a bit of a silly thing to ask about really. A story narrated by death, in Nazi Germany, pretty much guaranteed to to have some not very happy bits. Yes, by the way, the end is pretty horrible but inevitable, and not unexpected. With death being the narrator it means that you do get some sort of inkling of some of the things which will happen. Not the complete situation, but enough not to be too surprised. 
 You would think that with knowing what would happen would make you stop yourself from getting too attached to the characters involved, or stop you from being too sad when things happen to them. Somehow it didn't however. Maybe it was where the hints were placed, that we got to know the characters enough to be a little attached already. Maybe it was that you can't really stop yourself from becoming attached to characters even when you really, really don't want to be attached to them. 
 Either way I did feel attached. At times that made things heart wrenchingly sad. At times it brought tears to my eyes. 
 But I wouldn't have had it any other way.