Herschel Grynszpan

Herschel Feibel Grynszpan (sometimes spelled in the German form Grünspan) (born March 28 1921, died between 1943 and 1945), political assassin and victim of the Holocaust, was born in Hanover, Germany, of Polish-Jewish parents. He studied at a yeshiva in Frankfurt-am-Main, but by 1935 his position as a Jew in Germany was becoming impossible.

He applied to emigrate to Palestine but was rejected. His parents then decided to send him to live with his uncle and aunt, Abraham and Chawa Grynszpan, in Paris. He entered France illegally via Brussels, in September 1936.

Grynszpan spent the next two years trying to get legal residence in France, but was rejected by French officials. In August 1938 he was ordered to leave the country. He continued to live in Paris illegally. He was active in Jewish emigre circles and was a member of the Bundist youth movement Tsukunft. In October he heard that his parents, brother and sister were being deported to Poland by the Nazi authorities. When Poland refused to accept them, they (and thousands of other Polish-Jewish deportees), were stranded at the border.

On November 7, 1938, Grynszpan went to the German Embassy, where he shot Ernst vom Rath, a junior diplomat, three times in the abdomen. Vom Rath died two days later. The assassination was run on the front pages of all German newspapers, on the instructions of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. It was the excuse used by Goebbels and the Nazi regime to launch a massive pogrom against Jewish communities throughout Germany, known to history as the Kristallnacht (night of broken glass).

There are two theories about Grynszpan's motives. The first is that he simply went to the Embassy in a rage and shot the first German he saw. A variant on this is that he mistook vom Rath for the German Ambassador, Graf Johannes Welczek. This view, that Grynszpan acted solely out of rage at the persecution of his family, is still the more widely accepted view. After his arrest he said to the Paris police: "Being a Jew is not a crime. I am not a dog. I have a right to live and the Jewish people have a right to exist on this earth. Wherever I have been I have been chased like an animal."

The second, more controversial, theory, is that Grynszpan knew vom Rath and intended to shoot him. In 2001 Professor Hans-Jürgen Döscher, a leading German authority on the period and author of Reichskristallnacht, published documents which he said showed that Grynszpan and vom Rath had had a sexual relationship.

According to this account, vom Rath was well-known in Paris to be homosexual, and was known as "Madame Ambassadeur" and "Notre Dame de Paris" among Parisian gay men. He met Grynszpan in a Paris gay bar, Le Boeuf sur le Toit. It is not clear whether Grynszpan was himself homosexual, or whether he was using his undoubted good looks to gain an influential friend. According to Döscher, vom Rath had promised to use his influence to get Grynszpan's position in France regularised. When vom Rath reneged on this promise, Grynszpan went to the Embassy and shot him.

In support of this theory, Döscher quoted extracts from the diary of the French writer André Gide, himself homosexual and well-informed on Paris gay gossip. Vom Rath, Gide wrote, "had an exceptionally intimate relationship with the little Jew, his murderer." Later Gide said: "The idea that such a highly thought-of representative of the Third Reich sinned twice according to the laws of his country is rather amusing."

The American writer Ron Roizen, however, maintains that either Grynszpan or his lawyers made up the story about a homosexual relationship with vom Rath after the murder, in order to assist in his defence. Goebbels refers to it as a defense tactic in his diary entry dated April 5, 1942 (see text below), and in his entry of April 14, states his intention to stifle this and the deportation of Jews to Poland at the impending trial.

After the war, research conducted by French chronicler Dr. Alain Cuenot, and American investigator Gerald Schwab, indicates that the alleged homosexual affair between Grynszpan and vom Rath was a complete fabrication, designed by defense attorney, Maitre Vincent de Moro-Giafferi:

...the origin of the story of homosexuality was the defendant's French attorney, Maitre Moro-Giafferi. He claimed in 1947 that he simply invented the story as a possible line of defense, one that would put the affair in an entirely new light. In fact, however, rumors about vom Rath's homosexuality were in the air in Paris immediately after the assassination. Whatever the origins of the story, its utility was obvious: the murder could be presented not as a political act but as a cause passionelle - a lover's quarrel, in which the German diplomat could be judged incidentally as having seduced a minor. Moro-Giafferi shared the fears of the Grynszpan committee at the time of Kristallnacht that a political trial would be a catastrophe for the Jews of Germany and elsewhere. By adopting this legal strategy, they hope to defuse the affair and also reduce the penalty drastically, possible even prompting a suspended sentence. (Marrus, 1988)

Further evidence is presented by Gerald Schwab in the form of a letter, sent to Ernst vom Rath's brother in 1964 by Erich Wollenburg, a communist exile from Nazi Germany who claimed to be an associate of Moro-Giafferi:

''One day, and unless I am mistaken it was in the spring of 1939, I met de Moro-Giafferi on Boulevard St. Michel, and I asked him for news of Grunspahn (sic) for whom he was the defence lawyer. He had just come from visiting him in his cell, and was revolted by the attitude of his client.

''That young man is a fool, infatuated with himself,' he said. 'He refuses to give a non-political character to his act by saying for example that he assassinated vom Rath because he had had money quarrels with him following homosexual relations. Yet, such an attitude in regard to the muder of vom Rath is necessary, in order to save the Jews of the Third Reich, whose lives are becoming more and more precarious in regard to the prosperity, their health, their futures, etc. If only...he would deny the political motives of his crime, and assert that he had only personal vengeance in mind, vengeance as a victim of homosexuality, the Nazis would lose their best pretext for exercising their reprisals against the German Jews who are victims of his fit of madness and now, of his obstinancy.'

''I asked him if Grunspahn really had had relations with vom Rath. He replied, 'Absolutely not!' I said to him then, 'But as a defender of Gruhnspahn shouldn't you protect not only the interests of your client, but his honour as well?'

''It was at that moment that de Moro-Giafferi exclaimed, 'Honour! Honour! What is the honour of that absurd little Jew in the face of the criminal action of Hitler? What does the honour of Grunspahn weigh in the face of the destiny of thousands of Jews?'

Grynszpan was imprisoned in the Fresnes juvenile prison while the French authorities decided what to do with him. He was not a legal resident of France, and he was a minor. There was some doubt that he could be tried for murder. France at this time had a left-wing Popular Front government in which the Socialist leader Léon Blum, who was Jewish, was a leading figure. Such a government would not deport Grynszpan to certain death in Germany—he was not in any case a German citizen.

As a result of the events of Kristallnacht, Grynszpan's case received a great deal of publicity in Europe and the United States. Prominent U.S. journalist Dorothy Thompson, a leading opponent of Hitler and German fascism, broadcast an appeal on November 15th, 1938 that was heard by millions of Americans:

''I am speaking of this boy. Soon he will go on trial. The news is that on top of all this terror, this horror, one more must pay. They say he will go to the guillotine, without a trial by jury, with the rights that any common murderer has...

''Who is on trial in this case? I say we are all on trial. I say the men of Munich are on trial, who signed a pact without one word of protection for helpless minorities. Whether Herschel Grynszpan lives or not won't matter much to Herschel. He was prepared to die when he fired those shots. His young life was already ruined. Since then, his heart has been broken into bits by the results of his deed.

''They say a man is entitled to a trial by a jury of his peers, and a man's kinsmen rally around him, when he is in trouble. But no kinsman of Herschel's can defend him. The Nazi government has announced that if any Jews, anywhere in the world, protest at anything that is happening, further oppressive measures will be taken. They are holding every Jew in Germany as a hostage.

''Therefore, we who are not Jews must speak, speak our sorrow and indignation and disgust in so many voices that they will be heard. This boy has become a symbol, and the responsibility for his deed must be shared by those who caused it.

Following the broadcast on NBC Radio, the Journalists' Defense Fund was established to aid Herschel Gynzspan. The fund requested that, to offset Hitler's threats against the Jewish community of Europe, all donations should come from non-Jews. More than US$40,000 was donated to his defence and a leading lawyer hired to defend him. But Grynszpan was still in prison awaiting a determination of his status when the German Army approached Paris in June 1940.

The French authorities evacuated the inhabitants of the Paris prisons to the south, and Grynszpan was in the prison at Bourges when France surrendered to the Germans. On 18 July, Grynszpan was seized, presumably by the Gestapo, and taken to Germany. It was apparently Goebbels's intention that he be made the subject of a show-trial, to prove the complicity of "international Jewry" in the vom Rath murder. As the Goebbels Diaries entries appear to show, this plan was thwarted by Grynszpan's claim that vom Rath had been his lover.

Grynszpan's fate after 1942 is not known. It is believed he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was still alive in late 1943 or early 1944, when he was interrogated by Adolf Eichmann at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. He was probably executed some time in 1944 or 1945. There were persistent rumours after the war that he had survived and was living under another name in Paris, but there is no evidence for this. He was declared legally dead by the West German government in 1960. His parents, having sent him to "safety" in Paris while they and his siblings stayed in Germany, survived the war. They were deported to Poland and from there escaped to the Soviet Union.

Grynszpan is the primary character in the oratorio by Michael Tippett, A Child Of Our Time, which Tippett began in 1939. After a performance in Israel in 1962, Tippett was astonished to be met by Zindel Grynszpan, Herschel’s father.

Goebbels on Grynszpan

Entry from the Goebbels Diaries, 5 April 1942:

''I am having lots of work preparing the Grynszpan trial. The Ministry of Justice has deemed it proper to furnish the defendant, the Jew Grynszpan, the argument of Article 175 German law against homosexuality. Grynspan until now has always claimed, and rightly so, that he had not even known the Counsellor of the Legation whom he shot. Now there is in existence some sort of anonymous letter by a Jewish refugee, which leaves open the likelihood of homosexual intercourse between Grysnpan and vom Rath. It is an absurd, typically Jewish, claim. The Ministry of Justice, however, did not hesitate to incorporate this claim in the indictment and to send the indictment to the defendant. This shows again how foolishly our legal experts have acted in this case, and how shortsighted it is to entrust any political matter whatever to the jurists.

Eichmann on Grynszpan

Extract from Adolf Eichmann's testimony at his trial, 1961:

''Grynszpan was told...in...was late in the War...in...during the War - it must have been in 43 - or 44 - I was hardly - in 43 Grynszpan was...this is it: I received some...some...in the line of my duty I received an order that Grynszpan was in custody in Prinz Albrechtstrasse 8, and he had to be further examined concerning who was likely to have been behind the scenes. Accordingly I gave instructions to bring Grynszpan no, not this way - accordingly Krischak gave orders - Krischak was dealing with the matter - to bring Grynszpan and...either way it would have been useless, I said to myself. I still remember exactly, for I was curious to see what Grynszpan looked like.

''For this reason I can still remember this very well, and I still said: Will they - more or less thus - if they had not found this out during all those years, then this will also...this examination will also be pointless, this would be useless, but an order was an order. Grynszpan - er - Krischak questioned him and took notes. Nothing, obviously, emerged from the whole thing and I merely said then to Krischak that if he had completed the interrogation, I wanted him to bring him to me upstairs, for I very much wanted - for once - to look at the man Grynszpan. I wanted to talk to him. And I did then, exchange a few words with Grynszpan. He was very brief (abweisend) and brusque, was indifferent and gave short replies to all the questions. I wanted to ask him, since I had no knowledge at all of the whole matter, where he had been and things of that kind. On the whole he looked well, he was small - he was a smallish lad - I have absolutely - I don't know if I am wrong but this I remember - such a...he was such a little man - this is still preserved in my memory; and then he was again returned to custody in Prinz Albrechtstrasse 8. What happened then I don't know. Again I deleivered my report, that is to say, the report was again conveyed through the service channels by Krischak. It was a short report - because nothing came of it.

Do you know what happened to him subsequently?

''No, I do not know.

Was he taken to some camp, or, or was he shot or something?

''Evidently to some camp. He cannot have remained in prison, so I believe.

So...

''I was not authorized on this...

Didn't you interest yourself later as to what had happened to him - or possibly by chance did you hear something?

''No, it...it...it completely vanished ...completely vanished from my memory. Perhaps this was a short while before my departure for...for...perhaps this was the end of 1943...this I do not know. I don't know what...what happened to him. I did not hear anything more. I didn't hear anything more about it. At any rate I cannot ...I cannot recollect. I also don't know where...where he stayed for the rest of the time, until the day on which I ^* the...on which the Department received the order, to interrogate him with regards to possible supporters.

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Goebbels on Grynszpan

Eichmann on Grynszpan

Further reading