Barbed wire = Crown of Thorns = Symbolism?

"Oh, yes, I definitly remember him. The sky was murky and deep like quicksand. There was a young man parceled up in barbed wire, like a giant crown of thorns. I untangled him and carried him out. High above the earth, we sank together, to our knees. It was just another day, 1918." (p.145)

In this exerpt of The Book Thief, Death is remember Johann Hermann, the son of the mayor who died in World War I. This may be a bit of a stretch, but one might possibly be able to say that this part was symbolic. The Crown of Thorns is what was placed on Jesus' head when he was to be crusified. As I'm sure many people know, he knew he would die and did so for everyone (religious or not, that's the way it goes).

So anyway, many soldiers died in WWI, so we can probably guess that a lot of soldiers almost half expected that they would die. Also, we don't know the exact details, but since it was 1918, the end of WWI, the battles might have been quite intense and Germany might have been doing a lot of last second recruitment to help defend their land. So there's a posibility that Johann went to war to defend his country and his people. He probably knew there was a chance he would die, and he went off to war for the sake of others (to protect his family and country). One could make the connection to say that Johann, along with many other soliders, were in a way Christ figures because of those two traits. That, I believe, is the reason why Zusak chose to describe the barbed wire as a crown of thorns.