Alfred Flatow was a German Jew who won first place in gymnastics events during the 1896 Olympics. In 1932, he registered three handguns as required by a decree of the liberal Weimar Republic. The government warned that the police must carefully store the registration records so that no extremist group could ever obtain them. That feat was realized, however, when an extremist group led by Adolph Hitler seized power the following year and used those very same registration records to disarm “enemies of the state.” In 1938, the records were used to disarm Jewish gun owners such as Flatow, whose arrest report stated: “Arms in the hands of Jews are a danger to public safety.” He would later be starved to death in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
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