In February 1940, the Nazis established what would become the second largest Jewish ghetto in Poland. The ghetto’s chosen leader, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, realized that his survival rested on his ability to make the ghetto indispensable and set out to transform it into a productive industrial complex, forcing adults and children to work punishing hours to provide supplies for the German military.

Swedish novelist Steve Sem-Sandberg discusses Emperor of Lies, his award-winning novel that draws on genuine chronicles of life in the Lódz ghetto to ask the most difficult questions about survival and oppression.