NEW YORK — Executives at Buzzfeed issued an apology today for their quiz, “Plan A Perfect Winter Day and We’ll Tell You If You’d Survive the Holocaust,” after facing nearly universal backlash.
“In the wake of the response, I’d like to issue an apology on behalf of everyone at Buzzfeed: our intentions here were good, and we truly did not realize this was the reaction the quiz would receive,” Buzzfeed co-founder Jonah Peretti stated in a press release. “At Buzzfeed, we’ve prided ourselves on creating content that educates, informs, and entertains visitors. We thought this would be a unique way to expose people to the horrors of war and fascism, and it is now clear that this was not the best way to go about it.”
The offending quiz enabled readers to choose from mundane activities, such as picking an outfit or ordering from Starbucks, and using those answers to determine if they would be “gassed immediately” or “liberated by the Red Army.”
“This quiz was so fucking stupid. I don’t know why anyone thought this would be a good idea,” said regular Buzzfeed reader Rachel Hansen. “I took the quiz a bunch of times, and almost every time I did, I got ‘Survived Auschwitz, but Died on a Death March’ — save for the one time it just said ‘Gypsy scum.’ What the fuck is that all about? I kept changing my answers to get a better response, but nothing I did changed the results. Someone at Buzzfeed really fucked up this one.”
Meanwhile, reaction to the quiz within the Jewish community ranged from outrage to bemusement.
“I thought this was a joke when I heard about it, but when my friend sent me the link I couldn’t believe my eyes,” reported Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League. “How many people reviewed this thing before it was published? And at no point did anyone say, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t do this?’ I’m all for educating younger generations about the Holocaust, but I don’t think connecting sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes to dying of typhoid in the ghetto, or dying of exhaustion in a work camp and being buried in a mass grave, is an appropriate way of doing it.”
At press time, the quiz had been taken down and replaced with, “Order From Olive Garden and We’ll Tell You Which Member of the Khmer Rouge You’ll Marry.”