SAMUEL D. Kassow has argued that the shtetl should not be studied in a vacuum, but rather should be seen in its specific historical and legal context. Indeed, in the case of Polish Jewry, the First World War and especially the three years of German and Austro-Hungarian occupation created a very specific context. What did this turbulent period bring to the Jewish community in the shtetl? Catastrophe or inspiration? This chapter represents an attempt to answer this question.

At the beginning of the First World War, Jewish communities adopted a waitand- see attitude. But soon it became clear that, despite the declarations of Grand Duke Nikolay concerning the ‘morning star of liberty’ that was supposed to shine upon the Jews of the Russian empire, the tsarist army remained a pillar of antisemitism. In reality, everything depended on the local army headquarters. Jewish communities suffered more in some regions of the country than in others. Fears that the Jews might collaborate en masse with the central states’ armies surfaced early in the war. As a result, the Russian military authorities began mass deportations of Jews. According to data from May 1915 from the Jewish rescue committees in Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa, some 160,000 Jews had been expelled from the Polish provinces of the empire (not all Jews affected by expulsions left the territory of the Kingdom). Maurice Paléologue, the last ambassador of France in tsarist Russia, wrote that, for the Polish and Lithuanian Jews, the experiences of the first months of the war were among the most traumatic ever.

For the Jews of Poland and Lithuania the war is one of the greatest disasters they have known. Hundreds of thousands had to leave their homes…. Almost everywhere the prelude to their lamentable exodus has been the looting of their shops, synagogues, and houses. Thousands of families have taken refuge in Warsaw and Vilna; the majority is wandering aimlessly like a flock of sheep. It's a miracle that there have been no pogroms—organized massacres. But not a day passes in the zone of the armies without a number of Jews being hanged on a trumped-up charge of spying.