World War II occupies a central place in Yizkor books because of the horrors of the Nazis’ “final solution” and how it was seared into the memories of Jews who survived it.

World War I afflicted the lives of European Jews in a different way, particularly in what is now Poland. While Poland did not exist as an independent state during the war, its geographical position between the fighting powers — Austria-Hungary, the German Empire and the Russian Empire — put Jewish communities in the crossfire of a conflict where the fortunes of war were constantly shifting, resulting in terrific human and material losses.

“Hrubieszow During World War I” from the Yizkor book of the Polish town recounts how its people coped with the fear and uncertainty that war brought, whether through the military mobilization at its outbreak, the disruption of life, or the waves of soldiers who flooded the town — sometimes Kalmuks, Bashkirs, Tatars, and Circassians, and, most-feared of all, “the Cossacks and their bloodthirsty faces.”