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Jacob the Liar is an interesting story about ordinary people and their experiences in a Jewish ghetto in Poland during WWII. The Jews are forced by the Nazis to live in the ghetto under very strict rules. Jacob is a restaurant owner who gives hope to the Jewish people in the Nazi occupied Jewish ghetto by spreading rumors of impending liberation by the Soviet army. The narrator is a third party person that is telling stories he has heard from other sources. His recounts of the events are very descriptive which makes the reader wonder if the narrator is adding his own words.
The narrator even goes to the extreme off adding his own words by adding a false ending. The must have known of Jacob and his stories about the radio, but he did not know him personally. He became aware of Jacobs story on the train heading to the concentration camp at the end of the book. The reader then must assume that the narrator questions the other participants at the concentration camp or on the train to get the rest of the details of the story. The main characters in the story are Jacob, Lina, Kowalski, Miska, and the radio.
Jurek Becker wittily put in other characters that emphasized the diversification of the Jews in the ghetto. There was a famous layer that was only a quarter Jewish. A famous doctor was even taken out of the ghetto to try to save the life of a top Nazi officer. Famous actors were also characters in the story. Miska is described as a tall muscular man that was a former boxer. This description sounds a lot like the ideal Nazi Arian not what a sub-human would look like.
There are humanity issues in Jacob the Liar that the reader must deal with, such as the Germans treating the Jews as sub-human or moral dilemmas that Jacob suffers because he is lying about the radio on one hand and on the other hand he knows that his lying is giving people hope. The hope that the Jews feel does not save them from the Nazi hardships; rather it gives them mental strength that helps them deal with their surroundings and terrible treatment by the Nazi officers. The Jews in the ghetto never resist the Nazis with any physical uprisings but use other tactics as their silent war with the Nazis. One example is when Jacob takes pleasure in denying sunlight to the sleeping Nazi officer. The Nazi officer never knew what was being done to him but Jacob felt victorious. Jacobs lies can be viewed as a life saver to the Jews in the ghetto until they are exposed as lies.
There wasnt one suicide in the ghetto while Jacob was telling his lies about the Russians. The exposure of the lie about the radio even leads to the suicide of his best friend Kowalski. This leads back to the power of the lies and the hope it gave to the people. Why would Kowalski do this, one might ask?
I could argue that Kowalski was contemplating suicide before the word of the Russians advancing on the Germans came out. But, I believe Kowalski had his hopes set so high, learning that there was not a radio crushed him. His feeling of hope of being rescued from the Russians gave him the power to survive. Having lost that hope, lost his will to live. It is Jacob right in giving the Jewish people such high hopes? The first lie to Miska was very small, lying just about the fact that he heard the news in the police station instead owning his own radio.
Jacob did this only to get Miska's attention away from stealing potatoes in the train car. I believe that Jacobs stories about the Russians had an overall good effect on the Jews in the ghetto and were morally acceptable. This does not mean that Jacob is a hero, he just was a provider of relief. If Jacob had actually owned a radio and was relaying the information to the Jews, he would have been a hero for the reason that the risk of owning a radio was certain death if the Nazis found caught him.
Jacob was a good man who wanted to help people. His good nature is evident in his care for Lina. Jacob had to make sacrifices in order to care for her. He with the help from others were able to get the food needed for Lina. Also as important he was a father figure for her, telling her stories and teaching her discipline. Another symbol of his good nature was his decision to continue to tell the lies to the people knowing that it was morally wrong.
Jacob went thru a great self-examination to determine that continuing was the right thing to do. The tree is a very important symbol in this story. Because the inhabitants of the ghetto are denied them, trees acquired a meaning, which they did not have for the Jews or at least the author before they were imprisoned. In cutting down the trees in the ghettos, the Nazis acknowledged them for the physical and psychological life givers that they are.
The trees foster a sense of security for people and can symbolize strength. Throughout times trees have been linked to the concepts of life, survival, knowledge and hope. The tree introduces the story, is a reoccurring motif, and plays a part and past experiences of the narrator. The narrator in his childhood fell from a tree and was responsible for him not becoming a violinist, had his first sexual experience underneath a tree, and his wife was shot underneath a tree. The tree is also mentioned at the end of the story as a symbol of freedom.
The language used rather ordinary with Jewish words here and there. The novel reads as if it were spoken rather than written, which is, a reflection of the Jewish oral tradition. Back in the early days of Judaism most of the written works that would become the Bible were destroyed in the many wars that affected Bethlehem. The Jewish rabbis kept stories in their heads and later in hiding were able to rewrite the stories. And after the suicide of Kirschbaum, the narrator actively questions the believability of the account and produces confirmation of its truth. The narrator is one of the only survivors from the death camp that they were sent to.
He is a chronicler, a commentator, a reporter, and almost Omni present. The reason why I say almost is because he knows certain events because the persons involved told the events to him and he relays that information for us. He knows he has a story to tell, but this does not prevent him from thinking about how things could have or should have turned out. He supplies the reader with an alternative ending, warning he believes befits Jacob and his lies. Another issue that Becker does not address is the lack of historical accuracy about the ghettos. In one such Polish ghetto the Germans established a walled town less than one square mile in total area and herded Jews from the surrounding cities in the region.
In two years hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced into the ghetto then on to concentration camps. The conditions in the ghetto were representative of the Nazi views of the Jewish people. The official ration per person was 1200 calories each day. There was black market food being sold at very high prices but most people in the ghetto had little money. Housing was very overcrowded, seven people sharing a room was not uncommon.
In April of 1943 the Jew staged a month long protest. After the Nazis put down the resistance, they destroyed the ghetto, killing or sending all the Jewish people to concentration camps. Why did Becker choose not to recount all the facts about the ghetto? I believe that Becker wanted to tell a story about Jewish oppression but did not want oppression to be the main focus; he wanted the main focus to be on Jacob and the hope that he gave to the people in the Polish ghetto.
Jurek Becker's depiction of the ghetto needs only to be plausible to the reader without having the ghetto distract the readers attention from Jacob. Jacob the Liar was a wonderful work of Jurek Becker. I enjoyed his clever humor through the story, for instance when Lina is trying to get the lamp to work as a radio. Jurek gives the reader a look into the Nazi Polish ghetto and how the Jews survived. He described the ghetto as much as need without distracting the reader from the main story line. He makes the reader question their own values and feelings about sensitive issues in society.
The narration is pleasant to read, it flows very smoothly. The portrayal of the radio as a symbol of hope was very creative. The use of the dual ending very interesting in its self. Bibliography:
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