A 79-year-old Holocaust survivor says in a new interview that the U.S. under President Trump feels like Germany did just before the Nazis took over.

Stephen Jacobs told Newsweek that the rise of the far-right under Trump "feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin."

"Things just go from bad to worse every day," he said. "There's a real problem growing."

Jacobs, a New York architect who said he knows Trump personally, referred to the president as an "enabler" of far-right rhetoric.

"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."

"We thought our country had changed," Jacobs added. "In fact, it didn't. We were operating on a misconception. 'My god, we elected a black president in the United States! Look how far we've come!' We haven't."

The Polish-born Jacobs, who was imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, said he wouldn't call Trump a "fascist," because he thinks the president does not have "the mental power to even understand it."

"I couldn't say that Trump is a fascist because you've got to know what fascism is," he said. He also said that the president is "a sick, very disturbed individual" who is "out for himself."

Jacobs designed the Holocaust memorial at Buchenwald and spoke with Newsweek ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 12.