Ernst vom Rath

Ernst Eduard vom Rath (3 June 1909 – 9 November 1938) was a member of the German nobility, a Nazi Party member, and German Foreign Office diplomat. He is mainly remembered for his assassination in Paris in 1938 by a Polish Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan, which provided a pretext for Kristallnacht, "The Night of Broken Glass" on 9–10 November 1938. Historians consider Kristallnacht the beginning of the Holocaust.

Ernst vom Rath
Vom Rath in 1934
Born	Ernst Eduard vom Rath (1909-06-03)3 June 1909 Frankfurt am Main, German Empire
Died	9 November 1938(1938-11-09) (aged 29) Paris, France
Cause of death	Assassination (gunshot wounds)
Occupation	Diplomat
Years active	1932–1938
Known for	His death being cited as a pretext for Kristallnacht
Political party	Nazi Party

Early life and career

Vom Rath was born in Frankfurt am Main to an aristocratic family, the son of a high-ranking public official, Gustav vom Rath. 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. In April 1933 he became a member of the SA, the party's paramilitary unit.^[1] In 1935, after a posting in Bucharest, he was posted to the German embassy in Paris as its third secretary. Regarding the "Jewish Question", Rath expressed regret that the German Jews had to suffer but argued that anti-Semitic laws were "necessary" to allow the Volksgemeinschaft to flourish.^[2]

Assassination and motives

Herschel Grynszpan in Paris just after his arrest (7 November 1938)

On the morning of 7 November 1938, 17-year-old Polish-German Jew Herschel Grynszpan, who had learned of the deportation of his parents from Germany to the Polish frontier, went to the German embassy in Paris and asked to speak with an embassy official. Grynszpan shot the 29-year-old vom Rath five times, mortally wounding him with bullets to the spleen, stomach and pancreas.^[3][4][5]

Adolf Hitler himself sent his two best doctors, personal physician Karl Brandt and surgeon Georg Magnus, to Paris to try to save vom Rath's life. Hitler promoted him to the rank of Legal Consul, First Class (Gesandtschaftsrat I. Klasse), hours before vom Rath's death on 9 November at 17:30 (5:30 p.m.).^[6] Kristallnacht was launched within hours.

Why Grynszpan, who had fled from Germany to France in 1936, shot vom Rath is not known with certainty, although he was upset over the news of his family's deportation from Germany back to Poland. As far as it can be established, Grynszpan and vom Rath did not know each other. Most accounts of the shooting state that Grynszpan did not ask for vom Rath by name but only asked to speak to a member of the diplomatic staff. The records were falsified in 1942, and the Germans spread propaganda that Grynszpan's intention was to kill the Nazi ambassador, Count Johannes von Welczeck.^[5][7]

Grynszpan, who was immediately arrested and confessed, insisted his motives were to avenge the Jewish people for the actions already taken by the Germans. He had a postcard on him written to his parents that read, "With God's help. My dear parents, I could not do otherwise, may God forgive me, the heart bleeds when I hear of your tragedy and that of the 12,000 Jews. I must protest so that the whole world hears my protest, and that I will do. Forgive me."^[8]

Aftermath

Vom Rath was given a state funeral on 17 November in Düsseldorf, with Hitler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop among those in attendance. Germany used the incident to publicize that the Jews had "fired the first shot" in a war on Germany; in his funeral oration, Ribbentrop declared, "We understand the challenge, and we accept it."^[9]

Ernst vom Rath's grave in Düsseldorf

American journalist Dorothy Thompson reported widely on the case and raised funds for Grynszpan's defence in his French trial, which never took place.^[10] Much to the fury of Grynszpan who wanted to use the "Jewish avenger" defense successfully used by Sholem Schwarzbard at his trial in 1927, Grynszpan's French lawyer Vincent de Moro-Giafferi wanted to use as the defense the allegation that Rath was a homosexual who had seduced Grynszpan, and that Grynszpan had killed Rath as a part of a lover's quarrel. Under French law, those convicted of murder for political reasons faced the death penalty, but who committed a crime passionnel were usually given a lesser sentence.

Grynszpan initially escaped from prison when France fell in 1940, but he was captured by the Nazis and taken back to Germany.^[11] He was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to face a trial there, one that Joseph Goebbels planned to turn into Nazi propaganda about an international Jewish conspiracy and to claim it as evidence that Jews had started World War II.^[11][10][12]

However, the allegations emerged that vom Rath was a homosexual, and Goebbels learned that Grynszpan was intending to use this claim in his defence at the trial by implying that vom Rath had seduced him. Grynszpan planned to claim that vom Rath was his pimp and he had been sent to be with various diplomats (although Grynszpan later stated this to be false in an encrypted letter sent from Sachsenhausen).^[13][14]

The homosexuality accusations threatened to humiliate the Nazis.^[15] Goebbels wrote that "Grynszpan has invented the insolent argument that he had a homosexual relationship with... vom Rath. That is, of course, a shameless lie; however, it is thought out very cleverly and would, if brought out in the course of a public trial, certainly become the main argument of enemy propaganda."^[16]

The trial was planned for 1942 but never took place, primarily because the Nazis (who also sent homosexuals to concentration camps) feared it would turn into a gay scandal.^[17]

Grynszpan's ultimate fate is unknown but he probably died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.^[15] The last documentation indicating he was alive, or thought to be alive, was a Foreign Ministry memorandum on 7 December 1942.^[18] In 1960, at the request of his parents in Israel, the lower district court in Hanover officially declared Grynszpan deceased, listing his date of death as 8 May 1945 (the date of the German surrender to the Allies).^[19][20]

See also

• Wilhelm Gustloff, Nazi killed in 1936 by David Frankfurter

References

1. Gerald Schwab (1990). The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan. Praeger. p. 14. ISBN 978-0275935764.
2. Schwab, Gerald The Day the Holocaust Began, New York: Praeger, 1990 page 15.
3. "Portrait of Herschel Grynszpan taken after his arrest by French authorities for the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath. - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". collections.ushmm.org.
4. Alan E. Steinweis (2009). Kristallnacht 1938. Belknap Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-0674036239.
5. Giles MacDonogh. 1938: Hitler's Gamble. p. 217.
6. Hermann Weiß (2002). Biographisches Lexikon zum Dritten Reich [Biographies of the Third Reich]. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuchverlag. p. 365. ISBN 3-596-13086-7.
7. Herbert A. Strauss (1992). Jewish immigrants of the Nazi period in the USA (Volume 4: Jewish Emigration from Germany, 1933–1942). ASIN B007DZSB4M. Even the assertion that persists stubbornly to this day that vom Rath was only an accidental victim, that Grynszpan actually wanted to kill the highest-ranking representative of the German Reich in France, the ambassador, has been called into question since it emerged. There exists a series of Nazi forgeries in preparation of a show trial against Grynszpan following his abduction to Germany in July 1940. In this way, the theory that the Jews had instigated the Second World War was to be backed up, and the ongoing deportations publicly justified.
8. Schwab 1990, p. 43
9. Richard Cohen (2014). Israel: Is It Good for the Jews?. Simon & Schuster. p. 62. ISBN 978-1416575689.
10. Jonathan Kirsch (2013). The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris. Liveright. ISBN 978-0871407405.
11. "An Act of Desperation (English summary)". Archived from the original on 5 February 2015. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
12. Raul Hilberg (1990). Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, Band 3 [The Destruction of the European Jews, Vol. 3]. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch. p. 1089. ISBN 978-3596244171.
13. Trude Maurer (1988). "Abschiebung und Attentat. Die Ausweisung der polnischen Juden und der Vorwand für die Kristallnacht" [Deportation and Assassination. The Expulsion of Polish Jews and the Pretext for Kristallnacht]. In Walter H. Pehle (ed.). Der Judenpogrom 1938. Von der "Reichskristallnacht zum Völkermord [The 1938 Jewish Pogrom. From Kristallnacht to Genocide]. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. p. 70. ISBN 978-3596243860.
14. Hans-Jürgen Döscher (2000). Reichskristallnacht: die Novemberpogrome 1938 [Kristallnacht: The Pogroms of November 1938]. Munich. pp. 165, 169.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
15. Connolly, Kate (30 October 2001). "Did gay affair provide a catalyst for Kristallnacht?", The Guardian
16. Schwab 1990, p. 142
17. Ewout Klei (7 November 2013). "Hoe een 17-jarige jongen de Kristallnacht ontketende" [How a 17-year-old boy unleashed Kristallnacht]. ThePostOnline (in Dutch). Retrieved 19 January 2015.
18. Schwab 1990, p. 200
19. "Der Tote lebt" [The Dead Live]. Der Spiegel (in German). 31 August 1960. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
20. Raphael Gross (2013). November 1938: Die Katastrophe vor der Katastrophe [November 1938: The Disaster Before the Disaster] (in German). Frankfurt: C. H. Beck. p. 28. ISBN 978-3406654701.

Further reading

• Armin Fuhrer: Herschel. Das Attentat des Herschel Grynszpan am 7. November 1938 und der Beginn des Holocaust (Herschel. The assassination by Herschel Grynszpan on 7 November 1938 and the beginning of the Holocaust). Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86368-101-2. In German.
• Sidney Smeets: De wanhoopsdaad (An Act of Desperation). Balans, Amsterdam, 2013. ISBN 978-9-460-03718-4.

External links

• Newspaper clippings about Ernst vom Rath in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW