• Prologue: At the Edges of Empire


• Acknowledgments


• Note on Usage


• Introduction


• 1. Like a Thunderbolt: The Creation of a Jewish Refugee Population in 1914


• 2. Between Two Plagues: Wartime Catastrophes and Grassroots Responses


• 3. A Sacred Duty: Jewish War Relief from the Home Front to Front Zones


• 4. The New Pale: Jewish Refugees Resettle in the Russian Interior


• 5. Experiments in Resettlement: Relief Work Agendas and Refugee Responses


• 6. Women without Men: Jewish Women in Wartime Russia


• 7. The Golden Torah: The Rescue of Jewish Sacred Objects


• 8. As Good as Forgotten: Jewish Refugees and Relief Work in War and Revolution


• 9. A History without an Ending


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Index

Polly Zavadivker is Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Delaware. She is the editor and translator from Russian of The 1915 Diary of S. An-sky: A Russian Jewish Writer at the Eastern Front. Her articles and essays have appeared in Jewish Social Studies, the Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, and the multi-volume series Russia's Great War and Revolution.

Though the Holocaust has been documented in depth, historians and the public know very little about the experience of Eastern European Jews during the preceding world war. A Nation of Refugees tells the story of how ordinary Jewish people in the Russian Empire survived World War I as refugees and civilians. It focuses on the resilience and organized campaigns of humanitarian war relief that countered violence and victimization. Above all, it captures the voices and experiences of refugees at a time of upheaval and war through first-hand accounts.