In the US, they'd ask everyone the same questions, but have different standards for the results. The practice would not be secret, and so there would not be subterfuge of this scope (the plausible-deniability angle is gone). Finally, the practice would be used to boost the effective scores of the select less-qualified candidates, instead of damaging the scores of select more-qualified candidates. (This is not strictly a difference of terminology: in a competitive assessment affirmative action on a less-successful candidate would consistently crowd out candidates from the bottom end of the 'successful' range, whereas the Jewish questions would sabotage everyone who got them, including those who would otherwise be at the top of the field).
Most importantly, if things were like described by the GP, the intended effect is not to discriminate against an ethnic group, but balance its overwhelming predominance in a particular field. Which is precisely the objective of affirmative action.
Also - what cost should society pay in lost output due to the average ability of people allowed to enter certain occupations having been lowered by affirmative action (as it has to be if less capable candidates are admitted instead of more capable)?
Perhaps most interestingly - how much cost should a group supposedly "helped" by affirmative action pay for the dubious favor in (A) people being unable to successfully function at institutions who admitted them, not because of their abilities, but due to affirmative action and (B) perfectly capable people of the "helped" group being stigmatized because "everyone knows they only got to where they were due to affirmative action, and not due to their ability?"
(I guess you might notice that I'm not a huge fan of affirmative action, but if we could at least agree that there's no reasonable way to distinguish between "affirmative action" and "discrimination", that would be in itself awesome, even if we disagree about the merit of, well, that one thing with two names...)
Since you ask, I'll repeat myself. Suppose you have lots of people applying for 100 slots in the university. Affirmative action at a US university designed to give you a quota of, say, 10% minorities could, in the worst case, crowd out qualified persons #91-100. "Jewish questions" deployed against highly qualified Jews in a Jewish-dominated field in Lithuania could have easily excluded most qualified persons in the range #1-100.
I really don't like affirmative action either, but it differs substantially in intent, technique, and impact. Considering them morally equivalent slights against the ideals of fairness and merit is a very narrow, black-and-white world view - and without abandoning the ideal of justice, I think it's important to see that there are many shades grays in this world, and some are much much darker than others.
As for the difference between AA and simple discrimination, the latter is usually intended to increase the power of the current dominant group, while affirmative action should act in the interest of a minority or disadvantaged group. The mechanisms are the same, it's the objective that's different. Much as the same substance or tool can be used to cure or to kill, it's the intention that matters.
More broadly, though, if you think that this was "merely" about balance and that there was no anti-Semitic sentiment in academia in Soviet Lithuania in the 1950s, shortly after the "Rootless Cosmopolitan" campaign and squarely in the era of the "Doctors' Plot", then I may have a bridge to sell you.
The result in, for example, fire and police departments has been that all the tests, especially written tests, have been dumbed down so that 80% of everyone passes. That is automatically considered to fulfil the four fifths standard. Then candidates are chosen by political patronage or random selection.
The result is much worse average qualifications. If there were just a racial quota like US universities use, you could pick the top X% of people from each protected underperforming racial category but also the top people from each of the high performing categories. In the Jewish Problem and four-fifths scenario, you don't get the top people from the high performing category except by chance and with four-fifths not from the protected categories either.
The new, state of the art federal civil service exam written under the Carter administration was abandoned because protected racial groups did badly. the obvious solution of race norming was considered out of bounds because Republicans could demagogue against the practice. The entire civil service exam system was dismantled instead and race based hiring is promoted with no objective standards. The result is the worst of all possible worlds. It's just lucky that federal jobs are still plush enough that good people work hard to game any system to get them.
This is clearly false. The intent of affirmative action is to give certain oppressed groups get a little assistance; it is not to reduce the predominence of any other one. The latter might be a consequence, but it's certainly not the intent.
