On Burning Ground - Hardcover

Skakun, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031220566X ISBN 13: 9780312205669

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1999

Synopsis

A painful and powerful story of a father who had to deny his Jewish heritage, disguise himself as a Christian, and join the SS to survive World War II is written by his son, who returns to Germany to analyze not only his father's experience, but those of all who suffered. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

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 the Publisher:

"This is a story that must be told." --Elie Wiesel

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 031220566X
• ISBN 13: 9780312205669
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256