In early April 2025, rumors circulated online that U.S. President Donald Trump said or implied Nazis had treated Jewish prisoners "with love." For example, someone posted on Reddit making this claim (archived):
(reddit screenshot)
As of this writing, the post had amassed more than 20,000 upvotes and 1,200 comments. The same claim appeared on X. Someone even summoned Grok, X's artificial intelligence tool, to answer whether the claim was true, and Grok said it was (archived):
Further, several readers searched the Snopes site asking whether the rumor was true, while others emailed seeking to confirm it.
Here's what we found: The claims stem from a report by The New Republic regarding remarks Trump made in the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 7, 2025. Netanyahu was visiting the White House
As they answered journalists' questions, Trump discussed meeting some of the people Hamas kidnapped from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and asking them about the treatment they received from their captors. We found video footage of the remarks:
The transcript of Trump's comments read (emphasis ours):
As an example, I said to them, "Was there any sign of love, you were there 10 people..." — it's only 10 but it's pretty representative — "did the Hamas show any signs of like, help, or liking you? Did they wink at you? Did they give you a piece of bread extra? Did they give you a meal on the side? Like... you know you think of doing... Like what happened in Germany, what happened elsewhere ... People would try and help people that were in unbelievable distress.
They said "No." I said "All of them." I said "Did they ever wink at you, like, 'You'll be OK, you're going to be OK'?" "No they didn't do that. They'd slap us."
The hatred is unbelievable. And their lives, you know ... They lived in a pipe — not really a tunnel, it was a pipe — and they always thought they were suffocating, they were going to suffocate. And then they'd open up the pipe and it was like 3 1/2-feet high. This isn't, you know... We hear tunnel is bad, but pipes are worse. And the stories I heard were incredible, but I just said, "Was there any sign of potential love or affection?" And there were none whatsoever, it was amazing to me, there was nothing, like, "Here, take this, it's a little extra meal," or something. They lived like hell.
In other words, while Trump did not say the words, "Nazis treated Jewish prisoners with love," he did compare the way Hamas treated Israeli hostages with the way Germans treated Jewish people in the context of World War II and the Holocaust. In the latter, Nazi Germany systematically killed 6 million Jews, either by bullets or in concentration and extermination camps.
Trump appeared to suggest that the Germans treated their Jewish prisoners better than Hamas treated theirs. His argument was that people in Germany "and elsewhere" showed more sympathy and humanity to their prisoners with comforting gestures or food, while Hamas offered its hostages no "love or affection."