also pretty hilarious more people guess the USA than Israel. I know all the fools of the world believe the United States is controlled by Jews but come on...
There actually was a pretty massive Jewish population in Russia... most of them left because of virulent racism there and they or their descendants are now living in Israel, the United States, Canada, the UK etc. Mostly Israel and the United States.
Not really. No one refers to the USA as Texas and no one ever has. (Correct me if I'm wrong on this!) Holland is used for the Netherlands widely, even if it's incorrect, including by plenty of Dutch people in certain contexts. It's also the correct name for the Netherlands in many languages (or variations of it). Regardless, the point is that it's accepted by jetpunk on most quizzes, so people here get used to typing it just because it's quicker.
Speaking as someone with both Polish and Russian ancestors...Polish Jews had a 1%-1.5% survival chance during the Holocaust. (This is as low as it gets. The prewar population was 3 million). There are lots of reasons for this, but to get you started. Killing camps like Auschwitz were nearby, in Poland. And in Poland's 'Generalgouvernment', murders of Jews were regularly a public spectacle, sadly featuring silence, complicity and even sometimes the voluntary and enthusiastic participation of many locals (e.g. Jedwabne and Tykocin pogroms). In fact, there were spontaneous massacres of Jews without Nazis on the scene (like the Szczuczyn and Wąsosz pogroms). This has all been well-documented. While there were definitely non-Jewish Poles who helped their Jewish neighbours, risking their own lives in the process (Jan Karski is one amazing example), the majority did not, and indeed chose to do just the opposite.
Even after the war ended, there were pogroms against Jews who tried to return to their homes after managing to survive death camps (e.g. Kielce pogrom in 1946, where Polish police, soldiers and regular folks killed 42 Jewish survivors and injured 40 more). An estimated 1000 - 2000 Polish Jews were murdered upon returning home. After Kielce, almost all Polish Jews left the country, understandably I think.
It probbly does not help contemporary Jewish communities in Poland that the government has now made it illegal to discuss Polish state complicity in Holocaust-era murders of Jews. This makes not only historical research difficult, but may well lessen reckoning and trust building.
There are lots of excellent books out there but I'd suggest a few...Jan Grabowski's 'Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz' or 'Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland' are recent and thorough. Here's audio of a talk he gave a few years ago.
Doris Bergen's 'War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust' is an excellent overview, and gets into Soviet-Polish-Nazi interregna.
And to read about some of the incredible resistance efforts, especially in Eastern Europe, along with a detailed profile of Jan Karski, I highly recommend Nechama Tec's 'Resistance: Jews and Christians Who Defied the Nazi Terror'.
I missed Netherlands. I typed "Holland" (as the other quizzes admit also the use of this "alternative" name), but this quiz doesn't consider it valid.
It probbly does not help contemporary Jewish communities in Poland that the government has now made it illegal to discuss Polish state complicity in Holocaust-era murders of Jews. This makes not only historical research difficult, but may well lessen reckoning and trust building.
Doris Bergen's 'War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust' is an excellent overview, and gets into Soviet-Polish-Nazi interregna.
And to read about some of the incredible resistance efforts, especially in Eastern Europe, along with a detailed profile of Jan Karski, I highly recommend Nechama Tec's 'Resistance: Jews and Christians Who Defied the Nazi Terror'.