April 25, 2019
One Who Fought Back: Herschel Grynszpan and the Holocaust
By Rick RichmanA new book gives reason to reflect on the little-known story of the Jewish teenager who assassinated a German diplomat in 1938, an act that served as the pretext for Kristallnacht.
On the morning of November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year old named Herschel Grynszpan entered the German embassy in Paris. Hidden within his three-piece suit was a gun he had purchased earlier that day; in his pocket was a postcard on which he had written an abbreviated Hebrew phrase invoking God’s help and a message in German for his family:
My dear parents,
I could not do anything else, may God forgive me, my heart bleeds when I hear of the tragedy that befell you and 12,000 other Jews. I need to protest so that the entire world hears it, and this I will do. Forgive me.
At the embassy, Grynszpan asked to see an official, saying he had a document to submit that was too important to be left with a clerk. He was ushered into the office of a junior-level diplomat, twenty-nine-year-old Ernest vom Rath, who asked to inspect it. Drawing his gun, Grynszpan told him, “You’re a filthy Kraut, and in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews, here is the document.” He fired five shots at vom Rath, who died two days later.
