Which makes Charles's "you are not alone" speech underwater a bit... off. Erik's not where he is at that moment because he's a mutant (yes, technically he is, but that's a means and not the end) and Charles is so focused on the mutant business that the Jewish angle of Erik's Holocaust revenge story gets lost. And stays lost. A lot of Erik's philosophical shift from Vengeful Jew to Proactive Mutant is glossed over (because of who he needs to be by the time he starts looking like Ian McKellen) and it doesn't need to be.

I agree. I could follow the transition -- in that Erik is identified/tormented/exploited as a part of a marginalized, oppressed group and then finds himself part of a new marginalized, oppressed group and is determined to learn from the past & to not see this group suffer the same fate... but I wish the Jewish angle hadn't been dropped as completely (though I do think it's clearly thoughts of the Holocaust at the end when he cannot be swayed to spare soldiers just following orders).

I felt like part of Charles' problem in anticipating/fully understanding Erik (despite everything he does know) is that he himself doesn't see how direct the connection is. As someone who's always been able to 'pass', he can't/won't truly understand how Raven experiences the world and as he has never been through a mass genocide of his people, he just doesn't comprehend why Erik can't trust and hope as he does (he thinks he can comprehend, but I don't believe he truly does).