Herschel Feibel Grynszpan

Based on unpublished documents, reconstructs events which led to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan in Paris in 1938. Grynszpan grew up in Hannover and lived in Paris in the 1930s. He met vom Rath in the context of a social milieu of homosexuals, and obtained from him a promise of assistance for his family in Germany. When Grynszpan learned of the expulsion of his family to Poland, he decided to take revenge on 7 November 1938. Later, the "Kristallnacht" pogrom, which in fact had been planned long before, was presented by the Nazis as a spontaneous reaction to this murder. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)