ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question:  When Joseph Skakun was working as a slave laborer for the Nazis, how did he hide his Yiddish accent from his Russian and Polish companions?

Michael Skakun, a son of Holocaust survivors, was born in Jaffa, Israel, and raised in New York. He has served as a journalist, author, and translator. As a public affairs specialist, he has worked for a number of Jewish organizations including the National UJA and Congress for Jewish Culture.  He has served at such publications as the Forward (both English and Yiddish), the Litchfield County Times and the New York Observer as cultural writer and book reviewer.

On Burning Ground: A Son’s Memoir is the gripping story of how his father, through an incredible combination of ingenuity and luck, was able to survive Nazi occupation of Poland and World War II. The book received glowing reviews when it was first published in 1999, and Noble Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel chose On Burning Ground as one of five books for advanced reading about the Holocaust.

Michael Skakun founded the Joseph Skakun Project to honor his father and to educate future generations about the enormity of the Holocaust and convey the power of a resilient imagination in surmounting extreme adversity. Among the initiatives of the Project is the production of a documentary and feature film about Joseph Skakun.