 The largest Jewish population in the Russian Empire was the "Pale of Settlement" which consisted of what is now modern central and eastern Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, western and central Ukraine and Moldova, so most the "Russian" Jews in the Transvaal did not come from what is now modern Russia.Many of the Russian volunteers who arrived after the war started were antisemitic and refused to serve alongside the Jews already living in the Transvaal who volunteered to fight for their adopted country, leading to the two groups being segregated.Benzion Aaron, a Russian Jewish financier living in Johannesburg who was a friend of President Kruger founded the Jewish Ambulance Corps to take care of the wounded.