Der Attentäter

A reconstructed account of the life of Herschel Grynszpan, based on secondary sources and documents. On 7 November 1938 Grynszpan killed Ernst vom Rath in Paris, which precipitated the "Kristallnacht" pogrom. Attempts to analyze Grynszpan's motivation for his act. His Polish parents had emigrated to Hannover in 1911; Herschel, their third child, was born in 1921. In 1936 he left for Paris, intending to emigrate to Palestine. After receiving a letter from his sister relating that the family had been expelled from Germany and sent to the Polish border without means, Grynszpan murdered vom Rath as an act of vengeance. He was arrested; in 1940 he was turned over to the German occupiers. Between 1941-42 he was interned in Sachsenhausen. According to some reports, he was later imprisoned in Berlin and then liberated by the Red Army. After the war he probably returned to Paris and lived there with a new identity.