An amazing book, a powerful investigation, absolutely captivating. In 1944, in Ponar, Lithuania, the Nazis enslaved Jewish men to exhume and cremate the bodies of more than 70,000 Jews who had been executed in the forest. Trapped in something almost unspeakable, a group develops a daring escape plan. Despite the night and day guards, they dig a tunnel with only their bare hands. Twelve men escape – an act of great bravery and despair as well as exceptional ingenuity.

Based on oral testimonies of the perpetrators and every fraction of evidence that has been recorded, suppressed, or enhanced, No Road Leading Back revives the lives of the twelve and their acts of witness, as well as providing an urgent analysis of why their story has not often been told – and never accurately. Author Chris Heath examines the cultural use and misuse of Holocaust testimony and the need to confront uncomfortable historical truths with honesty and precision.

This shocking and inspiring true story of prisoners who dug their way out of Nazi-inflicted hardship and detention is both an astonishing escape narrative and a lesson in how we remember and continually forget the details of the Holocaust.