Help with the part in bold

This is a love story in time of war, a novel about a few years in the life and mysterious disappearance of a young bourgeois woman from Ljubljana, sucked into the whirlwind of a turbulent period in history. We follow her story from the perspective of five different characters, who also talk about themselves, as well as the troubled Slovenian times before and during World War II; times that swallowed, like a Moloch, not only the people of various beliefs involved in historical events, but also those who lived on the fringes of tumultuous events, which they did not even fully comprehend?they only wanted to live.

Hello! Could you please help me understand what the part in bold means? I know what "on the fringes" mean, but does it have a similar meaning to, let's say, "live on the fringes if society" - meaning that these people who live on the fringes of tumultuous events are the ones who suffer their consequences the most; or the other one similar to e.g. "on the fringe of the crowd" - meaning these people were little involved with these events if at all? I would really appreciate it if you could rephrase it for me.

Thank you so much!