Ernst Eduard vom Rath (3 June 1909 – 9 November 1938) was a minor German diplomat.

Life

---

He was born in Frankfurt am Main, the son of a high-ranking public official named Gustav. He attended a school in Breslau, and then studied law at Bonn, Munich and Königsberg, until 1932, when he joined the Nazi Party and became a career diplomat. Two years later he became a member of the SA, the party militia. In 1935, after a posting in Bucharest, he was posted to the German Embassy in Paris.

Death and aftermath

---

In November 1938 he was shot by a Jewish man from Germany named Herschel Grynszpan, who had fled from Germany to France as Adolf Hitler's deportation of Jews to Poland began. The reason Grynszpan chose vom Rath as his victim is not known with certainty (see the article on Grynszpan for a discussion of this).

Vom Rath's death was used by the Nazi regime to launch an anti-Jewish pogrom known as the "Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht), on November 9, 1938.

Accusations of homosexuality

---

The Nazis were opposed to homosexuality; however, before his death, many people in Paris were beginning to think that vom Rath was a homosexual. Some modern historians have used this to suggest Vom Rath was openly gay, but the evidence is disputed.

1909 births | 1938 deaths | Deaths by firearm | Murdered politicians

Ernst Eduard vom Rath | ארנסט פום ראט | Ernst Eduard vom Rath | Ernst vom Rath | Ernst vom Rath