The Emperor of Lies is an historical novel set in the Lodz, Poland ghetto under the Nazi-appointed Jewish chairman, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (aka Eldest of the Jews). It is closely based on survivors’ oral accounts, diaries, official German documents, and the Ghetto Chronicles. These newsletters were published in the ghetto unclouded by the mist of memory, but certainly subject to the constraints of censorship and the perception of its writers.
Rumkowski believed that a ghetto supporting highly productive workshops catering to Nazi needs would ensure its survival and save its inhabitants from deportation and annihilation. To this end he followed Nazi demands, including providing requisite numbers of people for deportation to the death camps. The question throughout the book: was Rumkowski a hero or a self-serving collaborator?
The author presents an overwhelmingly in-depth account of individuals and events, drawing the reader into a visceral response to the stark reality of ghetto life, making this a very difficult book to read. It is a book for a serious student of the Holocaust and requires a very deliberate, thoughtful reading, albeit an emotionally exhausting one.
The Emperor of Lies is fiction, but closely resembles non-fiction in style. Acknowledgements, afterward, glossary, main characters.
Fiction
The Emperor of Lies
- Review
By
– May 16, 2012
Naomi Kramer is a retired reading consultant teacher who developed curriculum for using literature to educate children and adults in the history of the Holocaust. She is a docent and educator at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Education Center of Nassau County.
Discussion Questions
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