CHRISTIAN Z.

AGPOON 2ND YEAR BSBA MARKETING MANAGEMENT

ETHICS 1008

JACOB THE LIAR

BY: PETER KASSOVITZ

Jacob the Liar is a film about hope in the face of hopelessness, faith in the face of
overwhelming evidence of doom. During World War II, Nazi-occupied Poland, poor Jewish cafe owner
Jakob accidentally overhears a radio news bulletin signaling Soviet military successes against German
forces on the Eastern front, only 400 kilometers away from the miserable Jewish ghetto in which he and
his whole community are held captive. After Jacob tells Mischa about the Russian front, news travels
fast, setting off wild speculations as well as endangering Jacob's life. Jacob's friends assume he has a
radio, and radios are strictly forbidden by the Nazi authorities. Some fear German reprisals and want
Jakob to destroy the radio. One man is shot dead simply trying to tell some concentration camp-bound
prisoners locked in a boxcar the news about the Russian advances. The truth can kill, but it can also save
lives. Jacob decides to keep offering people fictitious news bulletins about Allied advances against the
Nazis to fight the widespread depression in the ghetto, as well as its accompanying suicide rate. Jacob's
lies keep hope and humor alive among the people of the ghetto. However, the Germans soon learn of
the mythical radio and begin a search for the resistance hero who dares to operate it. Jacob is one who
has, as the saying goes, greatness thrust upon him. He doesn't want the job, he just wants to be left
alone, but just as he has a moral obligation to take care of the little girl he finds outside the ghetto walls,
he has a similar obligation to take care of his fellow prisoners by making the best use of the fateful
misunderstanding that has befallen him. Heroism, it seems, is a combination of circumstances and
obligation, not a function of some special, unique character trait. What is uplifting about this is that,
surrounded by the forces of dehumanization, ordinary people in the ghetto rose to extraordinary heights
of humanity and bravery, refusing to become brutal, like their captors. you can keep your humanity even
when the situation is desperate. Actually, there is not really hope. The hope is that you will not lose your
humanity. You might go to the gas, you might be exterminated, but you will be a human being. This
requires self-discipline. It's the same anywhere there is this kind of inhuman treatment -- Africa, Kosovo.
Actually, the film shows some of this temptation to give hope because hope is more necessary than food.
The novel was more dark in the sense that in the book he doesn't pretend that there is any hope. [6] Of
course Jakob has to give hope because people in the ghetto are committing suicide and this is worse.
This is why he has to go on. But Becker doesn't believe there is any hope. So, is it better to feel better by
believing in a lie, or at least by entertaining a lie, than it is to hang onto the truth with both hands and be
desolate. So, the challenge, aside from just staying alive, is not to succumb to the brutality and become
brutal oneself.

In the end, we're not certain where the truth lies, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that
human beings maintained their humanity in the face of unspeakable horrors.