[1] Roughly 60,000 Jews left the country during that period, going to Austria and Germany and then onwards via port cities to Canada and the United States.
[2] The 1866 Constitution of Romania barred citizenship for non-Christians, meaning that most Jews in the country lived with severely reduced rights.
Various attempts at mass Jewish emigration happened between that year and 1900, often in the face of resistance from the Romanian government[3] After a famine in 1899 and outbreaks of antisemitic violence, many young Romanian Jews developed a new practice of emigration: banding into disciplined groups which would share resources and leave the country together.
[2] After they reached the Austro-Hungarian border, they were often provided funds for rail passage by charitable Jewish organizations.
Her book in turn was inspired by the Yiddish language memoir of one of the original fusgeyers, Jacob Finkelstein's "Zikhroynes fun a fusgeyer fun Rumania kayn Amerika", which won a contest by the YIVO in 1945 and was printed in their journal, YIVO Bleter.