1.I knew a rav (he has since passed on) who was from Galicia. He said that unlike in Lithuania, which was always poor, Galicia was well off as it had oil (also textile factories). However, the economic boycott of the ’30s wiped out many Jews.
2. I can’t understand how Rav Elchanan discounted the possibility of the Holocaust. The Chafetz Chaim said that the troubles and killing that the Jews have suffered till then will be, by comparison, “a kinder shpeel – child’s play.” Of course, there was a geenral tragic attitude on the part of each country’s Jewry that the Nazis ym”s meant another country’s. The French said that they only meant the German Jews, whom they blamed for the defeat in WW1, the German Jews thought they only meant the Ostjuden who had foreign ways and the Polish Jews thought they only meant the Jews of the Soviet Union, whom they considered to be Communists. Rav Soloveichik says that this teaches us forcefully that we are all in the sameboat.