Daily Alert Archives

The Jew Whom Hitler Blamed for Kristallnacht

(Jewish Review of Books) Stephen Koch - On Nov. 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, 17, a Jewish boy distraught over the Nazi persecution of his family and thousands of other Polish German Jews, slipped into the German Embassy in Paris and shot German diplomat Ernst vom Rath. Adolf Hitler and his propaganda henchman, Joseph Goebbels, turned this act into a pretext for Kristallnacht, a nationwide orgy of state-sponsored anti-Semitic criminality, violence, and murder. When France fell in 1940, the Gestapo was ordered to find Grynszpan and bring him to Berlin alive. Hitler had decided to make him the defendant in a major media show trial "proving" that the Second World War had been started by the "World Jewish Conspiracy." Enormous amounts of Nazi money, time, and energy went into planning this charade, but it never took place because Grynszpan kept it from taking place. He quickly grasped what was to take place and to prevent it he concocted an ingenious lie. He claimed that he had not killed the German diplomat for any political reason but that it was part of a homosexual lover's quarrel. This inspired falsehood made an enraged Goebbels advise Hitler to postpone the whole thing. The writer chaired the Creative Writing division in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.
2019-11-08 00:00:00
Full Article