Michael Edelstein was headstrong and independent, a self-described mamzer. He was 10 years old when he rolled under barbed wire and escaped the roundup of the Jewish townspeople of Skala-Podolsk on the morning of Sukkoth 1942. Six months later, he escaped again from the Borshchov ghetto on the eve of its liquidation. Then he survived another year of hiding in forest bunkers and the ruins of buildings until the Nazis were finally...