Holocaust Survivor On Trump's America: It's '1929 Or 1930 Berlin'

“We thought our country had changed. In fact, it didn’t," said the 79-year-old Buchenwald survivor to Newsweek.
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A Holocaust survivor says the rise of the American far right under President Donald Trump “feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin” as Nazis thrived, and “things just go from bad to worse every day,” according to a Newsweek story.

Stephen B. Jacobs, a New York-based architect who designed the Holocaust memorial in Buchenwald, Germany, spoke to the publication ahead of Thursday’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Polish-born Jacobs, 79, has lived in America since a few years after being liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11, 1945.

Though Jacobs was not yet alive in 1929 or 1930, the Nazi Party’s second largest base of support at that time was in Berlin, after Munich. The party’s Berlin branch was headed by Joseph Goebbels, who later served as minister of propaganda under Adolph Hitler and frequently referred to Jewish people as “negative aspects” who needed to be “eradicated.

On the growth of the far-right movement and white nationalism in America, Jacobs said, “There’s a real problem growing.”

“Things that couldn’t be said five years ago, four years ago, three years ago — couldn’t be said in public — are now normal discourse,” he said. “It’s totally unacceptable.”

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NurPhoto via Getty Images

Jacobs terms Trump an “enabler’ of far-right rhetoric,” citing his first-hand knowledge of the president.

“I’m involved with New York real estate, I know this man personally,” he said. “Trump is an enabler. Trump has no ideas. Trump is out for himself. He’s a sick, very disturbed individual.” 

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NICHOLAS KAMM via Getty Images

The septuagenarian also said he couldn’t quite call Trump a fascist because “you’ve got to know what fascism is” and he doesn’t believe the president “has the mental power to even understand it.”

“We thought our country had changed. In fact, it didn’t. We were operating on a misconception,” Jacobs said.

People thought, ”‘My god, we elected a black president in the United States! Look how far we’ve come!’ We haven’t.”

This story has been updated with context about Berlin, circa 1929-30.

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Before You Go

Holocaust Memorials
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Persons walk through the holocaust memorial in Berlin, on a sunny but cold Monday March 25, 2013. (AP Photo/dpa, Markus Heine) (credit:AP)
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Relatives of Holocaust victims lay flowers next to the names of concentration camps during a ceremony marking the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Monday, April 8, 2013. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty) (credit:AP)
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Photo shows the house where Anne Frank lived in Amsterdam and where she hid with her parents to escape from Nazis between June 1942 and August 4, 1944. (DESK/AFP/Getty Images) (credit:Getty Images)
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A woman crouches next to candles lit to commemorate victims among cast iron shoes, a memorial of Holocaust victims on the bank of River Danube, in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday, April 16, 2013. (AP Photo/MTI, Noemi Bruzak) (credit:AP)
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Britain's Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, visits the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Thursday, June 27, 2013. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner) (credit:AP)
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Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili lays a wreath at the Hall of Remembrance at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Monday, June, 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty) (credit:AP)
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In this picture amde available Wednesday April 17, 2013 a man touches his forehead in front of the Victims' Memorial Wall during a ceremony in the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday, April 16 2013. (AP Photo/MTI, Tamas Kovacs) (credit:AP)
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Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., center, and Holocaust survivors Inge Berg Katzenstein, right, and her husband, Werner Katzenstein, left, light a memorial candle during a Days of Remembrance ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 11, 2013. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf) (credit:AP)
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U.S. first lady Michelle Obama visits the Holocaust Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin on June 19, 2013. (JOERG CARSTENSEN/AFP/Getty Images) (credit:Getty Images)
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reflects for a moment after placing a wreath from the United States at the Yad Vashem memorial during Holocaust Remembrance Day in Jerusalem, Israel Monday, April 8, 2013. (AP Photo/Paul Richards, Pool) (credit:AP)
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A person climbs on a Holocaust memorial statue in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, March 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) (credit:AP)
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In this picture made available Wednesday April 17, 2013, a woman lights a candle to commemorate victims among cast iron shoes, a memorial of Holocaust victims on the bank of River Danube, in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday, April 16, 2013. (AP Photo/MTI, Noemi Bruzak) (credit:AP)
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Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel lights a candle as he toured the Hall of Remembrance at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, with President Barack Obama, Monday, April 23, 2012, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (credit:AP)