NewsTracker Answers for week of Apr 13, 2020

Q: A 13-year-old boy in Estonia calling himself “commander” was an online leader of an international neo-Nazi group linked to plots to attack a Las Vegas synagogue and detonate a car bomb at the CNN news network. Where is of Estonia?

Circle the area on this map

Q: Before security officials intervened in January, the boy was a key figure in a group called the “Feuerkrieg Division.” In online chats, he claimed to be a founder of the group and had said he lived on one of Estonia’s islands in what neighboring sea?

A. Amundsen

B. Baltic

C. Celebes

D. Davis

B. On the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, Estonia along with Latvia and Lithuania are commonly known as the “Baltic states.” Estonian officials said the boy could not be criminally charged because of his age, but they were working with his parents to turn the boy away from violent white supremacism.

Q: In World War II, Nazi troops killed about a thousand Estonian Jews who had not managed to flee the country before Germany invaded. Troops from what nation later pushed the Germans out of Estonia?

A. Britain

B. Soviet Union

C. United States

D. All of the above

B. At the start of World War II the Soviet Union invaded and annexed Estonia as part of a deal between the Soviets and Nazi Germany. The Soviets killed most Estonian leaders, sent 11,000 people to Siberia and drafted 34,000. In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union including Estonia. Soviet troops retook Estonia from Germany in 1944.

Q: Estonia first became an independent nation at the end of World War I in 1918 after centuries of rule by . . .

A. Germans

B. Russians

C. Swedes

D. All of the above

D. Starting with a crusade by German warrior monks in the 13th century, what is now Estonia was successively conquered and ruled by Germans, Danes, Swedes, Poles and Russians. It regained its independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is now a member of the European Union and the NATO military alliance which includes the United States.

Q: About 1.1 million people speak, Estonian, a Uralic language most closely related to . . . .

A. Finnish

B. Latvian

C. Russian

D. Swedish

A. The official languages of Finland, Estonia and Hungary are part of the Uralic family believed to have originated in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains. Other European language groups - Germanic, Slavic and Romance – are in the Indo-European language family believed to have originated somewhere near the Caspian Sea.