The Power of Hope in Desperation:

Analyzing Jacob the Liar

Jacob was walking in the ghetto, but without a watch, he was uncertain about the time. It was common knowledge that no Jews were allowed out past eight at night, and with the sun going down, Jacob became unsure of himself. A German guard shined a spotlight on him and asked, “Am I mistaken, or is it forbidden to be on the street past eight o’clock?” The guard further chastised Jacob and finally ordered him to enter the German ghetto headquarters, a building that few enter and even fewer return from. While reporting to the duty officer, Jacob heard a radio clip about Russian soldiers fighting for Bezanika, located only two hundred miles from their ghetto. After learning that it was not yet eight o’clock, the duty officer saw no offense committed (the guard was playing a practical joke) and allowed Jacob to return to the ghetto. Thus sets up the storyline for the rest of the book, as Jacob spreads hope to his fellow ghetto citizens by pretending he has a secret radio.

The opening of the book is somewhat callous toward death and the current situation, a theme witnessed in the works of many popular Holocaust writers such as Night by Elie Wiesel and The Shawl by Cynthia Orick. For instance, in Night, Wiesel discusses the execution of a man who had extra rations of food. He was hung, and the prisoners had to walk by and look into his still-open eyes and protruding tongue. He ends with, “I remember that I found the soup excellent that evening…” Becker writes in a similar style, discussing the protagonist’s life in a somewhat distant way. When talking about trees, a somewhat benign subject in most contexts, the main character thinks to himself, “Then a few years later my wife, Hannah, was executed under a tree. I can’t say what kind of tree that one was, I wasn’t there, I was just told about it, and I forgot to ask about the tree.” In society today, the execution of one’s wife would be a very traumatic and devastating event. It would be difficult to talk about it at all, much less in such a nonchalant way. However, there are two main reasons he would address this traumatic subject in such a way. Perhaps he had seen so much death and suffering through his time in the Holocaust that, in his mind, the execution of his wife is no more important than the death of anyone else. Another possibility is that he is simply being sarcastic in the way he addresses the situation, and the last thing he really cares about is what type of tree it was. Like Wiesel and Orick, Becker flips between sounding sarcastic and nonchalant, making it difficult for the reader to completely understand the characters’ true mindset.

Jacob the Liar revolves around the main character lying about the impending Russian army’s advance toward the ghetto, with the distinct possibility that the ghetto would be liberated. In the meantime, Jews were rounded up by the Germans and sent west to the highly feared concentration camps, where most would not survive. The overall theme of this book is the role of hope in a seemingly lost situation. Jacob provided hope to everyone who lived in the ghetto, but at the same time, he worried about his lies being uncovered. In the end, he asks himself, “What was the point of it all?” True, his lies stemmed a flood of suicides among his fellow Jews, but is this morally just? People who would have ended their lives now lived for a false hope, and in the end, they found themselves on their way to a concentration camp like everyone else.

One of the most touching parts of this book is at the end when Jacob realizes his lies are beginning to unravel. Throughout his time in the ghetto, he kept the girl he was taking care of, Lina, in a fantasy world. He sheltered her from the violence, death, and suffering prevalent in the ghetto and made sure she was as well taken care of as possible. To keep her in this artificial world, he told her stories and provided the voice to radio shows that told of fantasy lands, exotic animals, and anything else a young child could dream of. However, one day an order is passed that everyone must leave the ghetto by train to a concentration camp. Lina thinks they are going to one of the lands she heard about on the radio shows and is very excited to go. “She starts skipping around the room, hardly able to grasp her good fortune, and Jacob doesn’t try to stop her…” The innocence of this girl is heartbreaking, and even Jacob doesn’t have the nerve to level with her and explain where they will be going. Soon she will be sitting in an overcrowded train car for days on end, a horrific journey that ends in almost certain death. Jacob’s lies kept her happy throughout their time in the ghetto, but in the end, the realization of the true situation will destroy everything Jacob worked for. Though it is a matter of personal opinion, the reigning question of this book is whether false hope is a better alternative to guaranteed suffering.

Becker also shows glimpses of the horrors in the ghetto without directly stating them. For instance, he mentions how Rosenblatt died because he ate a starved cat he found, a stunning example of the desperation these people were experiencing. He then mentions Piowowa, who died at the hands of the shoe warehouse foreman after an argument. However, he mixes many of these violent and gruesome events with discussions of his life as if they were everyday occurrences, merely mentioning in passing some of the beatings they endured for failing to work hard. By reading this book, it is difficult to get a full sense of what the ghetto was truly like. Each story of brutality and death is mixed with a large amount of everyday life that seems as if it could take place during the Depression of 1930s America.

Jacob the Liar is a very touching book that offers a different perspective on the Holocaust. The entire novel takes place in a Jewish ghetto rather than a concentration or death camp, which sets it apart from much of the literature from this period. The theme that stands out in this book is the role that hope plays in otherwise lost situations, raising the moral question of whether it is better to lie and build up false hope or to allow already desperate people to sink further into the depths of oblivion. Becker’s writing shows the emotions and aspirations of those Jews affected by the Holocaust and provides a unique perspective on an important subject.