The New York Times reported that Lemberg and Żółkiew were occupied by Russian forces, following a “most colossal battle” that involved over a million and a half men. The newspaper described a “thousandfold, cosmic destruction and wrecking of human life, the most appalling holocaust history had ever known.” One of the casualties was Leon’s brother Emil, killed in action before he reached his twentieth birthday. “What was a single murder,” Stefan Zweig asked, within “the cosmic, thousandfold guilt, the most terrible mass destruction and mass annihilation yet known to history?”
