On burning ground

On Burning Ground is the dramatic account of one man's improbable efforts to survive the Holocaust. Fleeing the slaughter in his Polish hometown of Novogrudek (Navaredok), Joseph Skakun assumes a series of false identities - first as a Christian, then as a Muslim, and finally as a recruit of the Nazi SS - in order to stay alive in the vortex of hell. Constantly fearing exposure and death, Skakun lives to see the downfall of the most brutal horror of the modern age. Finally emigrating to America, he tells his tale of nerve, dissimulation, and desperate inwardness to his son, who has recounted…