Jacob the Liar takes place in an unnamed Jewish ghetto in Poland during World War II. Such ghettos really were created in occupied Europe as part of the Nazi project to isolate and exterminate the Jews. Here we'll dive deeper into the history of these ghettos and the experiences of the Jews who lived in them.
Surprisingly, the term "ghetto" predates World War II by over 400 years, dating back to the Venetian Ghetto, which was officially created in March of 1516. The ghetto was named for a copper foundry—the ghèto—that existed in the area. The institution of the Venetian Ghetto allowed Jewish merchants to reside in the city for the first time while simultaneously isolating the Jews, who were forced to wear insignia to signify their religious affiliation.
Jewish ghettos were first introduced in German-occupied Europe after the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. The invasion put three million Jewish people under the control of the Germans, who chose to segregate these Jews into ghettos to keep the rest of the country free of "undesirable" populations. The ghettos were officially designated areas of cities in which the Jews were forced to live. They were overcrowded and had poor infrastructure as well as shortages of food and medicine. The first ghetto was opened in the Polish city of Piotrków Trybunalski in October of 1939.
Over 1,100 ghettos were created across German-occupied Europe during the war. Some, such as the ghetto in Jacob the Liar, were "closed," which meant that Jews were unable to leave the ghetto. Others, known as "open ghettos," lacked physical barriers but had restrictions on entering and exiting. Lastly, a third type, "destruction ghettos," existed for just a few weeks at a time before their populations were killed en masse.
Life in the ghettos was brutal. Jews carried out forced labor (like Jacob's work at the freight yard) under the threat of execution, and disease was widespread. Food was often scarce. Jews were forced to wear insignia that identified them as Jewish. That we see all of these qualities of daily life in Jacob the Liar should not be surprising, as Becker himself lived in the Łódź Ghetto as a child before being sent to two different concentration camps. You can hear Becker himself talk about this experience by clicking on the interview that can be found in the "Jacob the Liar Links" section of this study guide.
Though the narrator of Jacob the Liar insists that "there was no resistance" in his ghetto, we nonetheless see multiple characters in the novel engage in private forms of resistance, such as Herschel's keeping of his earlocks and Felix's possession of a prohibited radio. Similarly, while some real ghettos did see armed uprisings occur, a more common form of resistance was the smuggling of goods and intelligence into the ghettos.
Becker's portrayal of a Jewish ghetto in Jacob the Liar is honest and revealing. Knowing the real history of these ghettos only makes the novel more powerful.
