The face of East European Jewry

"First published in 1920 and never before translated into English, this work brings together the impassioned writing of one of Weimar Germany's most celebrated authors, Arnold Zweig, and the equally poignant illustrations by renowned graphic artist and lithographer Hermann Struck." "As members of the German wartime press division at Ober-Ost, both Zweig and Struck spent the final years of the First World War on the eastern front, on the outskirts of the Lithuanian city of Kovno (Kaunas). There they observed the life of the so-called Ostjuden, or East European Jews. The material that Zweig and Struck produced in the summer of 1918 stands out today not only for its novelty - as the first of several like-minded works published during the Weimar years - but also for its singular expression of a growing sentiment felt among otherwise assimilated, secular German Jews. Reflecting the rise of Zionism and the experience of the war, The Face of East European Jewry offers a dramatic and moving perspective on the short-lived romance of disenchanted Western Jews with the idea of a more authentic, more meaningful lifestyle in the East. One of the earliest interventions in the vexed relationship between German Jews and their Eastern neighbors, this book brings to life the world of the shtetl that did not survive the twentieth century."--Jacket.