ON BURNING GROUND : A SON MEMOIR’S – STRANGER-THAN-FICTION WAR THRILLER by MICHAEL SKAKUN

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“On Burning Ground: A Son’s Memoir” (St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan) is a true narrative of radical masquerade: the story of how at the height of World War II a fair-haired rabbinical student assumed the identities of a Catholic and, more strategically, of a Muslim, to survive racial genocide. In effect, it is a journey to the end of night capturing the visceral danger and spiraling suspense of a young man alone in the world, bereft of any structure of support, outwitting his destiny.

This is a tale of a wartime chameleon, a man of multiple masks, who survived by ingenuity, daring, and deft maneuver. In a desperate gamble at life, a parochial student at one of Poland’s pre-eminent rabbinical academies used his many false “selves”–especially his assumed Muslim identity, which gave him cover for his circumcision–to fake his way into the belly of the beast, the dreaded Waffen-SS, the inner core of the Nazi killing machine, in order to survive certain death.

A story of total and terrifying self-reinvention, it demonstrates the multiple arts of passing: psychological daring, sartorial strategy (he had to look the part) and linguistic mastery (he had to sound the part) to stay alive. By necessity, it touches upon such issues as existential choice and dread, moral anguish and ambiguity, as well as the ever-tormenting question of means and ends, questions to animate intense educational, psychological and ethical discussion. After the war, Joseph Skakun returned to Judaism in a fog of anguish in Paris and then in New York, where he lived amid a supernova of memory and penance. Michael Skakun become his witness as his father recounted his death-defying story to him. See (www.onburningground.com)

On Burning Ground – A Son’s Memoir

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