The "burning ground" of the title is not just the blasted landscape of Holocaust-era Europe but also the existential anguish of its protagonist, rabbinical student Joseph Skakun, so seared by the evils he has witnessed that at one desperate moment suicide seems the only possible response. Joseph was one of very few Jews in his northern Polish village to escape extermination at the end of 1941, and his odyssey of survival took him into the very "maw of the beast." Assuming the identity of a Muslim Tatar (to account for his circumcision), he traveled to Germany as a foreign laborer. Later, fleeing the suspicions of a fellow worker, he enlisted in the Waffen SS, an act of crushing ethical ambiguity for a young man steeped in the Jewish tradition of Mussar, which stressed moral self-examination. After the war, consumed by the need to convey and come to grips with his experiences, Joseph made a confidant of his son, the author of this galvanizing biography and memoir. Retelling his father's story, Michael Skakun pens a drama of biblical breadth and Dostoyevskian depth, scanting neither the visceral horror of his father's ordeal nor the resourcefulness and resolve that enabled Joseph to endure. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
Distinguished both by outstanding writing and a profound sense of moral complexity, this son's memoir of his father's incredible survival stands out among Holocaust memoirs. In 1941, when the Nazi noose tightened around Navaredok, Poland, Joseph Skakun, a young Talmudic scholar, tried to save his mother from death by hiding her in a basement. After his efforts failed and the Jews were rounded up, Joseph escaped into the forest and fled to Vilna, where he managed to borrow a birth certificate from Stefan Osmanov, an acquaintance who was a Muslim Tatar. Because he was blue-eyed and blond, Joseph was able to assume Osmanov's identity. "But here father, thrown back on his own slight resources, secretly crafted a new identity out of whole clothAcreated a mask so tight-fitting that it became nearly one with his life." Joseph quickly learned the rudiments of Islam, and, since Muslims were also circumcised, he was accepted into the German foreign labor program in Berlin. Assigned to farm work, Joseph tried to keep to himself but was drawn into village social life. When a fellow laborer became suspicious, Joseph enlisted in the SS out of desperation. Fortunately, the war ended before he was mobilizedAthus, according to the author, his father was saved from truly collaborating with Hitler. Skakun, an editor and translator who has served as a special consultant to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial council, offers an unusual and gripping account of resourcefulness, narrow escapes and "moral improvisation." B&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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