Kristallnacht and Herschel Grynszpan

Herschel Grynszpan – November 9, 1938

Next week on November 9th will be the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.  The pogrom carried out by the Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening.

Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers.  Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland.  Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.  Ninety one Jews were murdered in the streets.  Six hundred thirty eight subsequently committed suicide.

British historian Martin Gilbert wrote that no event in the history of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported as it was happening, and the accounts from foreign journalists working in Germany drew worldwide attention.  The Times of London observed on 11 November 1938: “No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenseless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday.”

The regime would try to make this violence a “spontaneous demonstration”against the Jews but it was all planned and instigated by the Nazis themselves.  And the match that lit the torch had commenced months before.

In August 1938 Germany began an effort to deport Polish Jews living in Germany back to Poland.  Some 16,000 were ordered to pack one bag and report to the train station where they would be transported to the Polish border.  Their property was confiscated.

The Polish government resisted threatening to strip citizenship for anyone living in Germany for more than five years.  The Germans pushed the Jews over the border.  The Poles pushed them back, eventually admitting only 4,000.  The remainder were stranded at the border with nowhere to go.

Among those stranded were the parents and family of  Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew living in Paris.  They were penniless.  His father, Sendel wrote him a postcard.  Could he please send something?

At the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, Sendel Grynszpan recounted the events of their deportation from Hanover on 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: ‘Juden Raus! Auf Nach Palästina!‘” (“Jews out, out to Palestine!”).

Ernst vom Rath

On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, with the postcard in his pocket, walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot Ernst vom Rath, the third ranking German diplomat in France, five times. Vom Rath died two days later. Nazi propagandists condemned the shooting as a terrorist attack to further the cause of the Jewish “world revolution”, and the pogrom was launched.

On that morning Grynszpan purchased a revolver and a box of bullets, then went to the German embassy and asked to see an embassy official. After he was taken to the office of Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath, Grynszpan fired five bullets at Vom Rath, two of which hit him in the abdomen. Vom Rath was a professional diplomat with the Foreign Office who expressed anti-Nazi sympathies, largely based on the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews and was under Gestapo investigation for being politically unreliable. However, he also argued that the anti-Semitic laws were “necessary” to allow the Volksgemeinschaft to flourish.

Grynszpan made no attempt to escape the French police and freely confessed to the shooting. In his pocket, he carried a postcard to his parents with the message, “May God forgive me … I must protest so that the whole world hears my protest, and that I will do.” It is widely assumed that the assassination was politically motivated.

Word of his death reached Hitler that evening while he was with several key members of the Nazi party at a dinner commemorating the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. After intense discussions, Hitler left the assembly abruptly without giving his usual address. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivered the speech, in his place, and said that “the Führer has decided that… demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.”

With these words, Goebbels commanded the party leaders to organize a pogrom.  At 1:20 a.m. Reinhard Heydrich sent an urgent secret telegram to the Sturmabteilung (SA), containing instructions regarding the riots. This included guidelines for the protection of foreigners and non-Jewish businesses and property. Police were instructed not to interfere with the riots unless the guidelines were violated. Police were also instructed to seize Jewish archives from synagogues and community offices, and to arrest and detain “healthy male Jews, who are not too old”, for work in the labor camps.

Was Grynszpan  making a political state ent when he murdered vom Rath?  The Nazis made vom Rath a martyr.  Was He?   Historian Hans-Jürgen Döscher says the shooting may have been the result of a homosexual love affair gone wrong. Grynszpan and vom Rath had become intimate after they met in Le Boeuf sur le Toit, which was a popular meeting place for gay men at the time.

Hans-Jürgen Döscher, considered Germany’s foremost authority on the events of November 9, 1938 following the publication last year of his definitive history, Reichskristallnacht, has gathered scores of documents and eyewitness accounts to support the theory.

Prof Döscher claims that Vom Rath was nicknamed Mrs. Ambassador and Notre Dame de Paris as a result of his homosexual antics. He and Grynszpan – a “boy with a beautiful penetrative gaze” – met in Le Boeuf sur le Toit bar, a popular haunt for gay men in the autumn of 1938 and became intimate.

Grynszpan, who was in his late teens, had been living illegally in Paris, and Prof Döscher states that 29-year-old vom Rath agreed to use his influential position to secure official papers for his friend.

When vom Rath went back on his word, Grynszpan reacted by storming into the German embassy on rue de Lille 78, demanding to see him, and opening fire on him with a revolver.

Grynszpan was arrested and languished in jail in France until 1940, when he was handed over to the Nazis, who planned a show trial which would be used to justify the outbreak of the second world war.

 A combined report from the German foreign, justice and propaganda ministries in January 1942 declared: “The purpose of the trial should be to clarify to the German people and the world that the international community of Jews is to blame for the outbreak of this war.”

According to Prof Döscher, when Grynszpan learned of this motivation for the trial in the early 40s, he revealed the real truth to his Nazi captors. Fearing embarrassment and humiliation, they then stripped vom Rath of his martyrdom and scrapped their plans.

Grynszpan was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then disappeared. He was declared dead in 1960.

“Most startling are the diaries of the French write Andre Gide, in which the writer expresses his amazement that the scandal failed to gain public attention. Vom Rath, Gide wrote, “had an exceptionally intimate relationship with the little Jew, his murderer”.

Referring to the fact that Vom Rath was both gay and had an affair with a Jew, Gide later said: “The thought that a such highly-thought of representative of the Third Reich sinned twice according to the laws of his country is rather amusing.”

But that was not what amazed him most. “How is it that the press failed to bring this scandal into the open?” he asked.

Next week is the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the beginning of the Holocaust.  It is a good time to think and remember.  Celebrities are spouting antisemitic remarks. young men stand on highway overpasses in the fascist salute while Jersey police have advised synagogues to tighten their security due to perceived threats.  The Nazis simply needed a reason in 1938.   The von Rath murder, whatever the reason, gave it to them.  Hitler gave his approval and Heydrich sent out the word.

If you don’t think it can happen here, you need to wake up and smell the coffee.

.