Herschel Grynszpan - Exile To Assassin

Exile To Assassin

Meanwhile, the position of the Grynszpan family in Hanover was becoming increasingly untenable. Sendel's business was declining, and Berta and Mordecai both lost their jobs. In August 1938 the German authorities announced that all residence permits for foreigners were being cancelled and would have to be renewed: it was obvious that Jews would not be given new permits. Poland, however, said that it would not accept Jews of Polish origin, whom it no longer considered to be Polish citizens, after the end of October. On 26 October, to beat this deadline, the Gestapo was ordered to arrest and deport immediately all Polish Jews in Germany.

The Grynszpans were among the estimated 12,000 Polish Jews arrested, stripped of their property and herded aboard trains headed for Poland. At the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Sendel Grynszpan recounted the events of their deportation, on the night of 27 October 1938: "Then they took us in police trucks, in prisoners’ lorries, about 20 men in each truck, and they took us to the railway station. The streets were full of people shouting: ’Juden raus! Aus nach Palästina!’ " ("Jews get out! Out to Palestine!"). When they got to the border, they were forced to walk two kilometres to the Polish border town of Zbąszyń (Bentschen in German). There, however, Poland refused to admit them, in view of this egregious breach of international law. The Grynszpans and thousands of other Polish-Jewish deportees were left stranded at the border, fed by the Polish Red Cross. It was from Zbąszyn that Berta Grynszpan sent a postcard to Herschel in Paris, telling him what had happened and pleading with him to rescue them and arrange for them to emigrate to America - something totally beyond his powers.

Berta's postcard was dated 31 October, and reached Herschel on Thursday 3 November. The next day was the Jewish Sabbath, and then came the weekend. On the evening of Sunday 6 November, he asked his uncle Abraham to give him money that he could send to his family, but Abraham said that he had little to spare, and that he was incurring both financial cost and legal risks by harbouring Herschel, an illegal and unemployed youth. There was a furious scene, and Herschel walked out of his uncle's house, with about 300 francs to his name. He spent the night in a cheap hotel.

On the morning of 7 November, Grynszpan wrote a farewell postcard to his parents, which he put in his pocket. He then went to a gunshop in the Rue du Faubourg St Martin, where he bought a 6.35mm revolver and a box of 25 bullets, for 235 francs. He then caught the metro to the Solférino station, and walked to the German Embassy at 78 Rue de Lille. At 9:45am at the Embassy reception desk, Grynszpan said that he was a German resident and that he wanted to see an Embassy official - he did not ask for anyone by name (an important point in the light of later events). The clerk on duty asked Ernst vom Rath, the more junior of the two Embassy officials available, to see him. When Grynszpan entered vom Rath's office, he pulled out his gun and shot vom Rath five times in the abdomen. According to the French police account, he shouted "You’re a filthy boche" and said he was acting in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews.

Grynszpan made no attempt to resist or escape, and identified himself correctly to the French police. He freely confessed to shooting vom Rath (who was in critical condition in a hospital), and again said that his motive for doing so was to avenge the persecuted German Jews. In his pocket was the postcard to his parents. It said:

"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.
Hermann "