" Jews had been so numerous in Poland, and because the share of urban property owned by Jews had been high, this amounted to a dramatic transformation of the whole society. It was not that all Poles were poorer than all Jews before the war. Nor was it the case that Poles prospered during the occupation—the scale of destruction, even in the countryside, was something inconceivable in western Europe. What was telling for the future was the German politics of relative deprivation: taking something from everyone, but taking everything from the Jews, and then taking their lives. This created the gaps—the empty apartments and commercial and professional niches—that Poles filled with all the greater determination given their losses during the war and their uncertainty about what was coming next. "

― Timothy Snyder , Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning