"In late 1914, S. Ansky, the influential Jewish-Russian journalist, playwright, and politician, received a commission: to organize desperately needed relief for Jews on the borderlands, caught between the warring armies of Russia, Germany, and the Austrian Empire. Thus began an extraordinary four-year journey through the Pale of Settlement, the border region to which Russian czars had long restricted Jewish residency and the site of much of the fighting on the Eastern Front.

This journey was meticulously documented by Ansky, a peerless witness of his time.".

"In daily accounts, Ansky details his struggles: to raise funds; to lobby and bribe at the czar's court; and to procure and transport food, medicine, and money to the ravaged Jewish towns, which, in the course of the war, were conquered and reconquered by Cossacks, Germans, Polish mercenaries, and Russian revolutionaries. Ansky depicts scenes of devastation - convoys of refugees, towns looted and burned to the ground, villagers taken hostage and raped, prey to all comers.

Speaking to maids and ministers, farmers and recruits, doctors and profiteers, Ansky hears and sees it all, as the czar's army disintegrates and the winds of revolution sweep across the land."--BOOK JACKET.