This movie and Jacob, o Mentiroso (1974) were both based on the novel "Jakob der Lügner," written in 1969 by the East German author Jurek Becker. As Jews, Becker and his parents were placed in a Polish Ghetto in 1939. In order to save him from deportation, his parents gave the Germans a false birth date; Becker forgot his real birth date and was never able to discover it later in life. Although he was eventually sent to the concentration camps Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen, both he and his father survived the war; his mother died of malnutrition after being freed from the camp. His novel "Jakob der Lügner" won the Heinrich-Mann Prize for literature in 1971; Becker died in 1997 of cancer.
Although thematically the film is very similar in tone and subject with Roberto Benigni's A Vida é Bela (1997), it actually started production well before the release of the Italian film.
Nina Siemaszko's father was actually incarcerated in the Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen during WWII.
10,000 film posters were put out across America showing Robin Williams wearing a five-pointed yellow star instead of the six-pointed star of David. Columbia corrected all other material except the poster which had already gone out when the error was spotted,
Armin Mueller-Stahl, who plays Dr. Kirschbaum (the Professor) was also in Jacob, o Mentiroso (1974) (Previous adaptation of the book the 1999 film is based on) as Roman Stahm, the brother of the character who was shot.