Herschel Grynszpan

739:] for whom he was the defence lawyer. He had just come from visiting him in his cell, and was revolted by the attitude of his client. "That young man is a fool, infatuated with himself", he said. "He refuses to give a non-political character to his act by saying for example that he assassinated vom Rath because he had had money quarrels with him following homosexual relations. Yet, such an attitude in regard to the murder of vom Rath is necessary, in order to save the Jews of the Third Reich, whose lives are becoming more and more precarious in regard to the prosperity, their health, their futures, etc. If only ... he would deny the political motives of his crime, and assert that he had only personal vengeance in mind, vengeance as a victim of homosexuality, the Nazis would lose their best pretext for exercising their reprisals against the German Jews who are victims of his fit of madness and now, of his obstinacy." I asked him if Grunspahn really had had relations with vom Rath. He replied, "Absolutely not!" I said to him then, "But as a defender of Gruhnspahn shouldn't you protect not only the interests of your client, but his honour as well?" It was at that moment that Moro-Giafferi exclaimed, "Honour! Honour! What is the honour of that absurd little Jew in the face of the criminal action of Hitler? What does the honour of Grunspahn weigh in the face of the destiny of thousands of Jews?" 1064:, Grynszpan was executed by the SS in 1942 when it became clear that he would not be tried for vom Rath's murder. Grynszpan was declared legally dead by the West German government in 1960 (with his date of death fixed as 8 May 1945). This declaration was at the request of his parents, who had emigrated to Israel in 1948 and said that they had heard nothing from him since the war. Since Grynszpan was extremely close to his parents and siblings (and was moved to assassinate vom Rath out of outrage at their treatment), it is unlikely that he would not contact his parents or his brother if he were alive after the war. During his two years in Paris (1936–1938), the lonely Grynszpan had written frequently to his family in Hanover about how much he missed them and how he wanted to see them again. The lack of communication with his family after 1945 would have been out of character. His parents, sending him to what they thought was safety in Paris while they and his siblings remained in Germany, survived the war. After their deportation to Poland they escaped in 1939 to the Soviet Union, where Grynszpan's sister Esther was murdered in 1942. 584:

say the men of Munich are on trial, who signed a pact without one word of protection for helpless minorities. Whether Herschel Grynszpan lives or not won't matter much to Herschel. He was prepared to die when he fired those shots. His young life was already ruined. Since then, his heart has been broken into bits by the results of his deed. They say a man is entitled to a trial by a jury of his peers, and a man's kinsmen rally around him, when he is in trouble. But no kinsman of Herschel's can defend him. The Nazi government has announced that if any Jews, anywhere in the world, protest at anything that is happening, further oppressive measures will be taken. They are holding every Jew in Germany as a hostage. Therefore, we who are not Jews must speak, speak our sorrow and indignation and disgust in so many voices that they will be heard. This boy has become a symbol, and the responsibility for his deed must be shared by those who caused it.

1097:. Ron Roizen wrote that the frequent claims of Grynszpan's survival, despite all the evidence suggesting that he died sometime in late 1942, reflected the guilt of Jews who shunned Grynszpan during his lifetime; his "abandonment seems a little less problematic, too, once it is believed that the boy miraculously survived the war. Grynszpan alive permits us to avoid more easily the painful moral issues his case so profoundly symbolizes. Was Grynszpan's action that of a heroic martyr or a misguided pariah? Were the reactions to Grynszpan's action among those for whom it was carried out appropriate or inappropriate? Though nearly a half century has passed since Herschel Grynszpan's assassination of Ernst vom Rath, little or no progress has been made on these painful questions." 629:

German he saw as a political act to avenge the persecution of his family and all German Jews. His statements after his arrest supported this view; he told the Paris police, "Being a Jew is not a crime. I am not a dog. I have a right to live and the Jewish people have a right to exist on this earth. Wherever I have been, I have been chased like an animal." Franckel and Moro-Giafferi said that if Grynszpan was allowed to claim that he had shot vom Rath with such a motive, he would certainly be convicted and possibly executed (despite his being a minor); French law took a severe view of political assassination. If the crime could be shown to have a non-political motive, he might be acquitted or receive a lesser sentence; French law traditionally took a lenient view of

554: 33: 434:, the German ambassador to France. As he entered the embassy Grynszpan walked past von Welczeck, who was leaving for his daily morning walk. At 9:45 am, Grynszpan identified himself as a German resident at the reception desk and asked to see an embassy official; he did not ask for anyone by name. He claimed to be a spy with important intelligence which he had to give to the most senior diplomat available, preferably the ambassador. Unaware that he had just walked past von Welczeck, Grynszpan asked if he could see "His Excellency, the ambassador" to hand over the "most important document" he claimed to have. The clerk on duty asked 314:. Grynszpan met few people outside it, learning only a few words of French in two years. He initially lived a carefree, bohemian life as a "poet of the streets", spending his days aimlessly wandering and reciting Yiddish poems to himself. Grynszpan's two greatest interests, other than exploring Paris, were spending time in coffeehouses and going to the cinema. He spent this period unsuccessfully trying to become a legal resident of France, because he could not work nor study legally. Grynszpan's German re-entry permit expired in April 1937 and his Polish passport expired in January 1938, leaving him without papers. The 759:'s defamation trials during the 1950s and 1960s. Soltikow was sued by vom Rath's surviving brother in 1952 for libeling his brother, and the evidence Soltikow presented to support his claims of a homosexual relationship between vom Rath and Grynszpan did not hold up in a court of law. All witnesses, even those quoted to the contrary by Soltikow, denied knowledge of the alleged relationship under oath. According to Smeets, Döscher's theory is untenable since it is based almost entirely on Soltikow's allegations; Grynszpan and vom Rath did not know each other, and there is no evidence that either was homosexual. 976: 972:

was false, and Grynszpan had said as much to some of his fellow inmates at Sachsenhausen. The problem was their belief that vom Rath was homosexual; Grynszpan had been given details of his personal life by Moro-Giafferi in Paris, and would reveal them in court. This would embarrass the vom Rath family and the Foreign Ministry; vom Rath's brother Gustav, a Wehrmacht officer, had been court-martialed for homosexuality. Gustav's homosexuality suggested, given the science and social paradigms of the time, the possibility that his brother may have been homosexual as well.

991:. Bormann would have thought it his duty to inform Hitler that Goebbels had not told him the whole story about the Grynszpan case. The Riom Trial was called off on 4 April, after Blum and the other defendants had used it as a platform to attack the Vichy regime, which probably decided Hitler against another risky show trial. By the beginning of May 1942, it was clear that Hitler did not favour a trial. Although the matter was raised on and off for several months, without Hitler's approval there would be no progress. Grynszpan was moved in September to the prison at 1008:

would have been useless, I said to myself. I still remember exactly, for I was curious to see what Grynszpan looked like. Nothing, obviously, emerged from the whole thing and I merely said then to Krischak that if he had completed the interrogation, I wanted him to bring him to me upstairs, for I very much wanted – for once – to look at the man Grynszpan. I wanted to talk to him. And I did then, exchange a few words with Grynszpan ... I don't know what ... what happened to him. I did not hear anything more. I didn't hear anything more about it.

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shot. Now there is in existence some sort of anonymous letter by a Jewish refugee, which leaves open the likelihood of homosexual intercourse between Grynszpan and vom Rath. It is an absurd, typically Jewish, claim. The Ministry of Justice, however, did not hesitate to incorporate this claim in the indictment and to send the indictment to the defendant. This shows again how foolishly our legal experts have acted in this case, and how shortsighted it is to entrust any political matter whatever to the jurists.

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aristocrat), was a self-promoting former SS officer who had specialized in writing anti-Semitic tracts in Nazi Germany; after the war he engaged in sensationalist journalism, usually claiming that he was boldly revealing "secrets" which no one else dared to. Soltikow wrote that he was doing a service to "World Jewry" by "proving" that Grynszpan killed vom Rath as the result of a homosexual relationship gone sour, rather than as the product of a world Jewish conspiracy.

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despite the risk of deportation. Beginning in October 1938 Grynszpan was in hiding from the French police who sought to deport him, a stressful situation. The few who knew him in Paris described him as a shy, emotional teenager who often wept when he discussed the plight of Jews around the world, especially his beloved family in Germany. Grynszpan came from a close-knit, loving family, and often spoke about his love for his family and how much he missed them.

1053:

was based on talks with people who claimed to have met people who knew that Grynszpan was living in Paris; despite their claims about his survival, no one had ever actually seen Grynszpan. The only person who claimed to have seen Grynszpan was Soltikow; everyone else claimed to have talked with other people who supposedly met Grynszpan. Heiber retracted his 1957 article in 1981, saying that he now believed that Grynszpan died during the war.

1057:

had survived the years 1943, 1944 and 1945, it would seem quite unusual that documents would not have been added to those already gathered". Cuenot noted that due to poor living conditions at Sachsenhausen, epidemics regularly killed thousands of inmates; he speculated that Grynszpan may have died in an epidemic, and SS camp officers would have a vested interest in covering up his death because he was supposed to be kept alive to be tried.

784:) was also sent to Paris, ostensibly representing the vom Rath family, but was widely known to be an agent of Goebbels. Grimm tried to argue that Grynszpan should be extradited to Germany (although he was not a German citizen), but the French government would not agree to this. Grimm and Diewerge knew each other well, working closely together in the 1934 Cairo Jew Trial, and their efforts in Paris in 1938-39 largely repeated their work in 845:'s unoccupied zone). France had surrendered on 22 June, and a term of the armistice gave the Germans the right to demand the surrender of all "Germans named by the German Government" to the occupation authorities. Although Grynszpan was not a German citizen, Germany was his last place of legal residence and the Vichy authorities did not object to Grimm's demand that he be handed over. Grynszpan was illegally 945:(later the head of the People's Court) on 22 January. Grynszpan, who had rejected the idea of using this defence when Moro-Giafferi suggested it in 1938, had apparently changed his mind. He told Heinrich Jagusch (one of his Gestapo interrogators) in mid-1941 that he intended using this defence but the Justice Ministry did not inform Goebbels, who was furious. He wrote in his diary: 712:. He claimed in 1947 that he simply invented the story as a possible line of defence, one that would put the affair in an entirely new light. In fact, however, rumors about vom Rath's homosexuality were in the air in Paris immediately after the assassination. Whatever the origins of the story, its utility was obvious: the murder could be presented not as a political act but as a 830:. En route, the convoy was attacked by German aircraft. Some prisoners were killed, and others escaped in the confusion. One was apparently Grynszpan, since he was not among the survivors who arrived in Bourges. However, he had not escaped; he had been left behind. Instead of escaping, he walked to Bourges and surrendered to the police. Grynszpan was sent to make his own way to 666:(a Paris bar). It is unclear whether Grynszpan himself was alleged to be homosexual or simply using his youth and appearance to win an influential friend. According to the theory, vom Rath had promised to use his influence to legalize Grynszpan's French residency. When vom Rath reneged on his promise, Grynszpan went to the embassy and shot him. According to a 2001 article in 902:). The Justice Ministry (still staffed by lawyers intent on upholding the letter of the law) argued that since Grynszpan was not a German citizen, he could not be tried in Germany for a murder he had committed outside Germany; a minor at the time, he could not face execution. Arguments dragged on through 1940 and into 1941. The solution was to charge Grynszpan with high 522:(Night of Broken Glass) and lasted all night and into the following day. More than 90 Jews were killed; over 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps (where over a thousand died before the remainder were released, several months later), and thousands of Jewish shops, homes, offices and more than 200 synagogues were smashed or burned. 958:, and the infuriated Goebbels said that the additional indictment implied that Grynszpan and vom Rath had had a homosexual relationship. Goebbels again saw Hitler in March, and assured him that the trial would begin in May (without warning him about the possibility of a crime-of-passion defence). In April, he was still grappling with the problem: 493:(where the putsch had been organised) to an audience of veteran Nazis from throughout Germany. It would not be surprising, Goebbels said, if the German people were so outraged by the assassination of a German diplomat by a Jew that they took the law into their own hands and attacked Jewish businesses, community centres and 1035:

protected them and demanded their release, preferably in the form of a general amnesty". That the Jew who had murdered a German was not prosecuted for his crime by the French, despite (supposedly) living openly in Paris, was used as argument for not prosecuting Germans who were involved in the murder of Jews during the

438:, the junior of the two embassy officials available, to see him. When Grynszpan entered vom Rath's office, vom Rath asked to see the "most important document". Grynszpan pulled out his gun, and shot him five times in the abdomen. According to the French police account, he shouted right before pulling out his gun: 298:; he was, by all accounts, more religious than his parents. After eleven months, he left the yeshiva, returned to Hanover and applied to emigrate to Palestine. The local Palestine emigration office told Grynszpan that he was too young and would have to wait a year. He and his parents decided that he should go to 822:

to proceed, and the Swiss lawyer engaged by the Germans employed a number of delaying tactics. The trial had not begun and Grynszpan was still in prison when the German army approached Paris in June 1940. French authorities evacuated the Parisian prisoners to the south in early June. Grynszpan was sent to

265:

him because he was an Ostjude, and he was treated as an outcast both by his German teachers and fellow students. As a child and a teenager, Grynszpan was known for his violent temper and his tendency to respond to antisemitic insults with his fists and was frequently suspended from school for fighting.

1029:

The theory that Grynszpan was living in Paris and not being prosecuted for vom Rath's murder, despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, would have been attractive to many Germans after the war. During the 1950s, thousands of Germans who had been involved in the Holocaust had not been prosecuted for

771:

in Paris while legal arguments continued over the conduct of his trial. His defence team attempted to delay the trial as long as possible on procedural grounds in the hope that the publicity surrounding the vom Rath murder would subside (making the trial less politicized), with no opposition from the

600:

Several appeals were launched to raise money for Grynszpan's defence. In the United States, Thompson launched an appeal which raised more than $ 40,000 in a few weeks. She asked Jews not to donate to the fund so the Nazis could not attribute Grynszpan's defence to a Jewish conspiracy, although Jewish

318:

ruled in July 1937 that he had no basis for remaining in France, and he was ordered to leave the following month. Grynszpan had no desire to return to Germany. In March 1938, Poland passed a law depriving Polish citizens who had lived continuously abroad for more than five years of their citizenship.

264:

and tended to be more religiously observant, impoverished, and less educated. Herschel dropped out of school at age 14. Grynszpan was considered by his teachers to be intelligent, if rather lazy, a student who never seemed to try to excel at his studies. He later complained that his teachers disliked

1044:

Soltikow was sued for defamation by the vom Rath family. In 2013, Dutch historian Sidney Smeets called Solitkow a con man whose allegations about Grynszpan and vom Rath were lies. During his trial in Munich, Soltikow claimed that Grynszpan was present during the previous day's court proceedings as a

971:

wrote to Goebbels on 10 April demanding to know whether Hitler, when he had authorized the trial, had been aware that Grynszpan was planning to use a homosexual defence. What troubled the Justice Ministry was not the allegation that vom Rath had had a sexual relationship with Grynszpan; they knew it

273:

Grynszpan attended a state primary school until 1935 (when he was 14) and later said that he left school because Jewish students were already facing discrimination. He was an intelligent, sensitive and easily-provoked youth whose few close friends found him too touchy. Grynszpan was an active member

1056:

French doctor Alain Cuenot, who made the most extensive search for Grynszpan during the late 1950s, reported that he found no evidence that Grynszpan was alive; Cuenot found no references to Grynszpan in German documents after 1942, which strongly suggested that he had died that year: "If Grynszpan

1052:

and survived the war; another article by Egon Larsen, published two years later, said that Grynszpan had changed his name, was living in Paris and was working as a garage mechanic. Heiber's article was unmasked as based entirely on rumours that Grynszpan was alive and well in Paris. Larsen's report

1025:

In April 1952, German Nazi journalist Michael von Soltikow published two articles claiming that Grynszpan was living in Paris and repeated the theoretical 'gay lover' motive for vom Rath's murder. "Graf von Soltikow", as he liked to call himself (his real name was Walter Bennecke, and he was not an

821:

Moro-Giafferi changed tactics and demanded an immediate trial when war broke out, confident that anti-German sentiment and German inability to present evidence would result in Grynszpan's acquittal. The investigating judge had joined the army, however; the Ministry of Justice did not want the trial

583:

I am speaking of this boy. Soon he will go on trial. The news is that on top of all this terror, this horror, one more must pay. They say he will go to the guillotine, without a trial by jury, with the rights that any common murderer has... Who is on trial in this case? I say we are all on trial. I

512:

entry for that day: "In the afternoon the death of the German diplomat vom Rath is announced. That's good ... I go to the Party reception in the old Rathaus. Terrific activity. I brief Hitler on the affair. He decides: allow the demonstrations to go on. Withdraw the police. The Jews should feel the

788:. The Germans argued that Grynszpan had acted as the agent of a Jewish conspiracy, and their fruitless efforts to find evidence to support this further delayed the trial. Grimm and Diewerge, who were both antisemitic, were obsessed by the belief that Grynszpan had acted on behalf of unknown Jewish 588:

Liberal and left-wing newspapers and commentators in a number of countries echoed Thompson's sentiments. Deploring vom Rath's assassination, they said that Grynszpan had been driven to his act by the Nazi persecution of German Jews in general and his family in particular. Jewish organizations were

544:

Grynszpan was distraught when he learned that his action was used by the Nazis to justify further violent assaults on German Jews, although his family (having been deported to the Polish border) was safe from that particular manifestation of Nazi antisemitism. The Nazi government had been planning

302:

and live with his uncle and aunt, Abraham and Chawa Grynszpan, instead. Grynszpan obtained a Polish passport and German residence permit and received permission to leave Germany and go to Belgium, where another uncle (Wolf Grynszpan) lived. He did not intend to remain in Belgium and entered France

1007:

8, and he had to be further examined concerning who was likely to have been behind the scenes. Accordingly I gave instructions to bring Grynszpan no, not this way – accordingly Krischak gave orders – Krischak was dealing with the matter – to bring Grynszpan and ... either way it

962:

I am having lots of work preparing the Grynszpan trial. The Ministry of Justice has deemed it proper to furnish the defendant, the Jew Grynszpan, the argument of Article 175 . Grynszpan until now has always claimed, and rightly so, that he had not even known the Counsellor of the Legation whom he

628:

government), with Yiddish-speaking lawyer Serge Weill-Goudchaux as his associate. Legal fees and expenses were paid from Thompson's fund for Grynszpan's defence. Until Franckel and Moro-Giafferi took over his defence, it was accepted that Grynszpan went to the Embassy in a rage and shot the first

448:

Grynszpan made no attempt to resist or escape, and identified himself truthfully to the French police. He confessed to shooting vom Rath (who was in critical condition in a hospital), and repeated that his motive was to avenge the persecuted Jews. In his pocket was the postcard to his parents; it

336:

The position of Grynszpan's family in Hanover was becoming increasingly precarious; his father's business was failing, and both of his siblings lost their jobs. German authorities announced in August 1938, in response to a Polish decree stripping Polish Jews living abroad of citizenship, that all

1017:

One of Grynszpan's lawyers, Serge Weill-Goudchaux, said after World War II that Grynszpan had been executed in 1940; according to Fritz Dahms of the German foreign office, he died just before the end of the war. Unfounded rumours circulated after the war that he had survived and was living under

637:

defense, insisting that he was not homosexual and had killed vom Rath as an act of political protest against the German government's antisemitic policies. The shy, socially-awkward Grynszpan confided to Moro-Giafferi that he had never had a girlfriend and was still a virgin, asking his lawyer to

327:

Grynszpan was afraid to accept a job because of his illegal-immigrant status and depended for support on his uncle Abraham, who was also extremely poor. His refusal to work caused tension with his uncle and aunt, who frequently told him that he was a drain on their finances and had to take a job

1034:

wrote in 2002 that in the 1950s, "the vast majority of the population retained the nationalistic attitudes that had been inculcated in them earlier. Not only did they not accept the verdict that war crimes had been committed, but they also expressed solidarity with those who had been convicted,

401:

to Germany and were shot". On 3 November, Grynszpan received a postcard from his sister in Zbąszyn dated 31 October recounting what had happened and (in a line which was crossed out) apparently pleading for help. On 6 November 1938, Grynszpan asked his uncle Abraham to send money to his family.

940:

and other French politicians was due to begin in February, and Goebbels did not want two show trials at once. There were also further legal difficulties; it was feared that Grynszpan would challenge the legality of his deportation from France, which the Justice Ministry officials felt had been

949:

Grynszpan has invented the insolent argument that he had a homosexual relationship with ... vom Rath. That is, of course, a shameless lie; however it is thought out very cleverly and would, if brought out in the course of a public trial, certainly become the main argument of enemy propaganda.

593:"deplored the fatal shooting of an official of the German Embassy by a young Polish Jew of seventeen", but "protested energetically against the violent attacks in the German press against the whole of Judaism because of this act" and "reprisals taken against the German Jews". In France, the 601:

organizations also raised money despite this. In the immediate aftermath of vom Rath's assassination, two Parisian Jewish lawyers (Szwarc and Vésinne-Larue) were retained by the Grynszpan family. When the case became internationally known, the family sought a well-known lawyer and retained

638:

arrange a sexual encounter with a beautiful French girl in case he was sentenced to death. Grynszpan considered himself a hero who stood up to the Nazis, and believed that when his case went to trial his (preferred) "Jewish avenger" defense would acquit him. The outcome of the

893:

proving the complicity of "international Jewry" in the vom Rath killing. Grimm and Wolfgang Diewerge (an official in Goebbels' ministry) were put in charge of trial preparations, using files seized from Moro-Giafferi's Paris offices; Moro-Giafferi had escaped to Switzerland.

1587:, on 10 November 1938. Nazi authorities turned a blind eye as SA stormtroopers and civilians destroyed storefronts with hammers, leaving the streets covered in pieces of smashed windows. Ninety-one Jews were killed, and 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps. 589:

horrified by Grynszpan's action, which they condemned more severely than most non-Jewish liberals (while echoing the plea of extenuating circumstances and condemning the subsequent attacks on all German Jews in response to the act of an isolated individual). The

449:

read, "With God's help. My dear parents, I could not do otherwise, may God forgive me, the heart bleeds when I hear of your tragedy and that of the 12,000 Jews. I must protest so that the whole world hears my protest, and that I will do. Forgive me. Hermann ".

897:

Goebbels found bringing Grynszpan to trial in Germany as difficult as it had been in France. Although the Nazis held unchallenged political power, the state bureaucracy retained its independence in many areas (and harboured the most effective networks of the

349:, Sendel Grynszpan recounted their deportation during the night of 27 October 1938: "Then they took us in police trucks, in prisoners' lorries, about 20 men in each truck, and they took us to the railway station. The streets were full of people shouting: 245:

and retained that status during their years in Germany. Grynszpan was the youngest of six children, only three of whom survived childhood. His parents' first child was stillborn in 1912. Their second child, daughter Sophie Helena (born in 1914), died of

1230: 250:

in 1928. A daughter (Esther, also known as "Berta") was born on 31 January 1916 (she was murdered by the Nazis in 1942 or 1943), and a son (Mordechai) on 29 August 1919. A fifth child, Salomone, was born in 1920 and died in 1931 in a road accident.

695:

No firm evidence exists that vom Rath and Grynszpan had met before the shooting. German embassy officials were certain that Grynszpan had not asked for vom Rath by name, and saw vom Rath only because he happened to be on duty at the time. In the

941:"irregular". Most disturbing of all was the revelation that Grynszpan would claim that he had shot vom Rath because of a homosexual relationship. This was communicated to Grimm, Diewerge, and other officials by Justice Ministry state secretary 1092:

Grynszpan was widely shunned during his lifetime by Jewish communities around the world, who saw him as an irresponsible, immature teenager who (by recklessly killing a minor official like vom Rath) brought down the wrath of the Nazis in

513:

people's fury. That's right. I issue appropriate instructions to the police and party. Then I give a brief speech on the subject to the Party's leadership. Thunderous applause. Everyone dashed to the telephone. Now the people will act".

995:, and his fate after September 1942 is unknown. Since his trial was never called off (it was postponed indefinitely), he was probably intended to be kept alive in case circumstances changed and a trial became possible. According to 323:

as a result, and continued to live illegally in Paris. Lonely and living in poverty on the margins of French life as an illegal immigrant, with no real skills, he grew increasingly desperate and angry as his situation worsened.

720:

that a political trial would be a catastrophe for the Jews of Germany and elsewhere. By adopting this legal strategy, they hoped to defuse the affair and also reduce the penalty drastically, possibly even prompting a suspended

999:, he may still have been alive in late 1943 or early 1944 at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Eichmann testified at his 1961 trial that he was ordered to examine Grynszpan in 1943 or 1944, but did not know his fate. 571:, the American journalist, made an impassioned 14 November broadcast to an estimated five million listeners in defence of Grynszpan and noted that the Nazis had made heroes of the assassins of Austrian Chancellor 386:) ended on 29 October, when the Polish government threatened to begin expelling German nationals from Poland. The Grynszpans and thousands of other Polish-Jewish deportees stranded at the border were fed by the 849:

to Germany on 18 July 1940, and was interrogated by the Gestapo. He was delivered to Bömelburg (on the border of the occupied zone), driven to Paris, flown to Berlin and imprisoned at Gestapo headquarters on

202:

government in 1960. This was done at the request of his parents, who said they had not heard anything from him in over 15 years, which was out of character for him. However, this remains a matter of dispute:

716: – a lover's quarrel, in which the German diplomat could be judged incidentally as having seduced a minor. Moro-Giafferi shared the fears of the Grynszpan committee at the time of 473:. In his eulogy, Ribbentrop called the shooting an attack by Jews on the German people: "We understand the challenge, and we accept it". Vom Rath's assassination was used to justify antisemitic 917:

In November, Goebbels saw Hitler and obtained his approval for a show trial which would put "World Jewry in the dock". The trial was set for January 1942, with former French foreign minister

609:, the Union of Revisionist Zionists). Thompson would later intercede with President Roosevelt to help Franckel and his family (wife and two sons) to flee France to the United States in 1942. 345:

all Polish Jews in Germany. The Grynszpan family was among the estimated 12,000 Polish Jews arrested, stripped of their property, and herded aboard trains headed for Poland. At the trial of

1045:

spectator. When the judge said that if that were true Grynszpan would have to be arrested for vom Rath's murder, an angry Soltikow claimed that Grynszpan would never show his face again.

529:

in property damage (about US$ 400 million at the time, or $ 6.7 billion in 2015 dollars) was reported. Although Jews were able to file insurance claims for their property losses,

650:

in 1926 on the grounds that he was avenging pogroms by Ukrainian forces, was a major factor in Grynszpan's seeking the "Jewish avenger" defense (to Moro-Giafferi's chagrin).

565:

brought Grynszpan international notoriety. Enjoying his celebrity status, he was frequently interviewed in his prison cell and wrote letters to celebrities around the world.

2041: 597:"rejected all forms of violence, regardless of author or victim" but "indignantly protested against the barbarous treatment inflicted on an entire innocent population." 2419: 684:, who wrote that vom Rath "had an exceptionally intimate relationship with the little Jew, his murderer": "The idea that such a highly thought-of representative of the 1134: 1022:

sometime in late 1942; the historical consensus is that he did not survive the war. However, a 1946 photo emerged in 2016 of a man resembling Grynszpan in Germany.

397:, "I found thousands crowded together in pigsties. The old, the sick and children herded together in the most inhumane conditions ... some actually tried to escape 700:

in 1941, Grynszpan told fellow inmates that he intended to falsely claim at his trial that he had had a homosexual relationship with vom Rath. Canadian historian

303:

illegally in September 1936. (Grynszpan could not enter France legally because he had no financial support; Jews were not permitted to take money from Germany.)

1121:, on 3 July 1946, shows a man resembling Grynszpan participating in a demonstration by Holocaust survivors against British refusal to let them emigrate to the 733:

One day, and unless I am mistaken it was in the spring of 1939, I met Moro-Giafferi on Boulevard St. Michel, and I asked him for news of Grunspahn [

337:

residence permits for foreigners were being cancelled and would have to be renewed. On 26 October, a few days before the decree was to come into force, the

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arrived in Paris on 15 June with orders to find him. They followed him to Orléans and Bourges, where they learned that he had been sent to Toulouse (in

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did not exist and the killings of vom Rath and Gustloff were unrelated. According to American historian Alan Steinweis, the lack of evidence for these

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Conditions for the refugees, trapped in the open on the German-Polish frontier, were extremely poor; according to a British woman who worked with the

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under another identity. A photograph of a man resembling Grynszpan was cited in 2016 as evidence to support the claim that he was still alive in

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Hanover. When he left school, his parents decided that there was no future for him in Germany and tried to arrange for his emigration to the

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scheduled to testify that "World Jewry" was responsible for dragging France into a war with Germany (its supposed political objective).

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who had emigrated in 1911 and settled in Hanover. Zindel opened a tailor's shop, from which he earned a modest living. Because of the

2379: 410:(an average day's wage in Paris at the time) and spent the night in a cheap hotel. On the morning of 7 November, he wrote a farewell 2374: 2173: 725:

Further evidence is presented by Gerald Schwab in the form of a letter sent to vom Rath's brother in 1964 by Erich Wollenberg, a

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to his parents and put it in his pocket. Grynszpan went to a gun shop in the Rue du Faubourg St Martin, where he bought a 6.35mm

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Steinweis, Alan "The Trials of Herschel Grynszpan: Anti-Jewish Policy and German Propaganda, 1938–1942". pp. 471–488. from

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government had no intention of accepting those whom it had just stripped of Polish citizenship. The "Polish operation" (German:

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by chief archivist, Christa Prokisch led to speculation that Grynszpan could have survived the war. The photograph, taken at a

2049: 2399: 747:, in November 2013, Dutch author Sidney Smeets published a book based on previously-inaccessible archival sources. The book, 1288:

Steinweis, Alan. "The Trials of Herschel Grynszpan: Anti-Jewish Policy and German Propaganda, 1938-1942" pages 471-488 from

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A facial recognition test indicated a 95% possibility, the highest possible score, that the man in the photo was Grynszpan.

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