Hebrew Writing of the First World War

Almost one and a quarter million Jewish soldiers took part in the First World War, spread through the armies on both sides of the conflict. Their numbers were more or less in proportion to the Jewish populations in the countries involved, and sometimes even greater. There is comparatively little writing about this experience in Hebrew. Those who did write novels, poetry, stories, memoirs and diaries in Hebrew were either serving soldiers on the Eastern Front and in Palestine, or civilians who were caught up in the war in one way or another. Their work reflected not only the tribulations of the trenches, but also the hardship suffered by civilians. Most of the Hebrew writers in Europe, including Saul Tchernichowsky, U.Z. Greenberg and Yehuda Ya'ari, confront the Russian pogroms in their work. Starvation, illness and banishment were the lot of the Jews in Jerusalem and the Lower Galilee, and the appalling situation of the Jewish refugees was represented by memoirists, journalists and f