We use the word regime about Iran. About North Korea. Rarely about Germany in 1933. But that is exactly what it was.
About half a million Jews lived in Germany when Hitler took power. They were doctors, teachers, shopkeepers, mothers and neighbors. Some had fought for Germany in the First World War and still kept the medal in a drawer.
Some saw it right away and left. Many stayed and told themselves it would pass. Regimes moderate, they said. This is Germany. We are Germans.
The signs came one at a time. A boycott. A law. A dismissal. A school door closed to a child. A passport stamped. Each step was small enough to live with, until the day it was not.
Those who got out left their money, their homes and often their parents behind. Those who stayed were later taken from the same streets they had walked their whole lives.
About 160,000 German Jews were murdered. In all, six million Jews were killed across Europe. A massacre on a scale the world had never seen, carried out by a regime that had announced what it would do.
On October 7, 2023, more than 1,200 people were massacred in Israel, most of them civilians. Families in their homes. Young people at a music festival. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The killers filmed it and celebrated.
If you hate Jews because they are Jews, then you are the regime.