A ghetto, somewhere in Eastern Europe, around 1943-1944; poor Jakob Heym by coincidence hears a radiomessage in the German headquarters and concludes that the Germans are on the run for the Russians. Jakob spreads the news to his fellows in the ghetto, lying that he has heard it on his own illegal radio, and suddenly the ghetto reawakens, everybody is making plans again, the suicide numbers crumble. But his little lie brings Jakob into trubble. The storyteller, a vague co-resident of the ghetto, makes up two different endings, both very gloomy.
Of course, this is a story about the holocaust (in fact it is one of the lesser known holocaust stories), but the stress is at least as much on the constraints of human existence, on the difficult and complex relations between people, on the life giving aspect of hope, on the warmth of true humanity. The author, while involved, uses a detached way of story telling, but in a hesitating, compelling way.