http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/images/KohnovalskyCohn.jpg
Here’s an example of a letter trying to straighten out that kind of confusion.
My grandmother, who is still alive, says and spells her name significantly differently in English and Polish. If she is speaking or writing in English she uses one version, in Polish, the other (with feminine endings but there are other differences, too, including first letter of first name). I tried to press her on this before, and it was exasperating to her. “That’s how it’s spelled in English”; “That’s how it’s spelled in Polish.” She in no way conceived of them as two separate names.
I like to note that 3 million Polish Christians also died in WWII. The difference is described by Elie Wiesenthal - I think - as: it was theoretically possible for a Polish Christian to survive but theoretically impossible for a Polish Jew.
The reason so many died is the Pale of Settlement, which dates back to Catherine the Great in the late 18thC, ran through the border region and was shifted over time into Poland. It also ran through what is now Belarus. Jews in Russia were generally restricted to living in the Pale and not permitted in many cities.
The Russians were always looking for a “solution” to Jews living in Russia. You see one in Fiddler on the Roof. The Tsar’s plan then was thirds: convert ⅓, drive ⅓ out and kill ⅓. It’s unfortunate the German “solution” wasn’t carried out with Russian rather than German efficiency. The reasoning behind Russia’s issues with Jews are different but similar: they didn’t fit into the religiously bound “community” of Orthodoxy and weren’t property like perhaps half of Russia’s population and thus were considered both separate from the “body” and apart from the hierarchy of control. Add some specifically German racism and … The German addition was more about Germanic myths of purity, assimilation of people who seemed but couldn’t be “true Germans” - and thus the claim that Jews “imitated” real culture, couldn’t express real genius but could only be “clever”. The Germanic myths crystallized into a weird hatred which can be expressed as “Germans were pure and thus Jesus didn’t need to appear to them first but you needed redemption and you refused so …” Russian treatment of Jews was more about difference and control of society by the landed aristocracy and the Church.