Herschel Grynszpan - Grynszpan Versus Goebbels

Grynszpan Versus Goebbels

Grynszpan spent the remainder of his life in German custody, being shuttled between Moabit Prison in Berlin and the concentration camps at Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg. At Sachsenhausen he was housed in the "bunker" reserved for "special prisoners" - he shared it with the last Chancellor of Austria, Kurt Schuschnigg. He received comparatively mild treatment because Goebbels intended that he be made the subject of a propaganda show trial, to prove the complicity of "international Jewry" in the vom Rath murder. Grimm and an official of Goebbels's ministry, Wolfgang Diewerge, were put in charge of the preparations, using the files which had been seized from Moro-Giafferi's offices in Paris (Moro-Giafferi himself had escaped to Switzerland).

Goebbels, however, found it just as difficult to bring Grynszpan to trial in Germany as he had done in France. The Nazis held unchallenged political power, but the state bureaucracy retained its independence in many areas (and in fact harboured the most effective networks of the German Resistance). The Justice Ministry, still staffed by lawyers concerned to uphold the letter of the law, argued correctly that since Grynszpan was not a German citizen, he could not be tried in Germany for a murder he had committed outside Germany, and since he had been a minor at the time he could not face the death penalty. These arguments dragged on through 1940 and into 1941.

The solution was to charge Grynszpan with high treason, for which he could be legally tried and executed if convicted. It took some time to persuade everyone concerned of the "legality" of this, and it was not until October 1941 that he was formally indicted. The indictment argued that Grynszpan's objective in shooting vom Rath had been to "prevent through force of threats the Führer and Reichschancellor from the conduct of their constitutional functions" at the behest of international Jewry. In November Goebbels saw Hitler and gained his approval for a show trial that would put "World Jewry in the dock." The trial was set for January 1942. It was arranged for the former French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet to testify that "World Jewry" had been responsible for dragging France into a war with Germany. This was the political objective of the trial.

January 1942 came, however, and the trial did not take place. This was partly because of more momentous events. The United States had entered the war in December, the same month that the German armies had suffered a major setback on the eastern front before Moscow. In February the Riom Trial of Blum and other French politicians was due to begin - Goebbels did not want two show trials at once. It was partly also because of further legal difficulties. It was feared that Grynszpan would challenge the legality of his deportation from France, which the Justice Ministry officials felt had been "irregular."

Most disturbing of all, however, was the revelation that Grynszpan would claim that he had shot vom Rath because he had had homosexual relations with him. This was communicated to Grimm, Diewerge and other officials by Roland Freisler, later the head of the People's Court, but at this time State Secretary of the Justice Ministry, on 22 January. Apparently Grynszpan, having rejected the idea of using this line of defence when Moro-Giafferi had thought of it in 1938, had decided that it was worth a try. He had told one of his Gestapo interrogators, Dr Heinrich Jagusch, that he intended using this defense as long ago as mid-1941, but the Justice Ministry had not informed Goebbels, who was furious. He wrote in his diary:

"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."

In March Goebbels again saw Hitler, and assured him that the trial would get under way in May. He did not, however, warn Hitler of the problem of the possibility that Grynszpan might claim that he had had homosexual relations with vom Rath. In April he was still grappling with the problem. He wrote:

"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 . Grynszpan 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."

On 10 April the acting Justice Minister, Franz Schlegelberger, wrote to Goebbels demanding to know whether Hitler, when he had authorized the trial, had been aware that Grynszpan was planning to use the "homosexual defense." The issue that was troubling the Justice Ministry was not the allegation that vom Rath had had a sexual relationship with Grynszpan - they knew that to be false, and in fact they knew Grynszpan had told some of his fellow prisoners at Sachsenhausen that it was false. The problem was their belief that vom Rath had in fact been homosexual, that Grynszpan knew details of this (these had been given to him by Moro-Giafferi in Paris), and that he would reveal them in court. This would embarrass both the vom Rath family and the Foreign Ministry. It was also learned that vom Rath's brother Gustav had served a prison sentence for homosexual offences.

Soon after this, Hitler was made aware of the problem - by whom it is not clear, but it is probable that the matter had reached the ears of Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery and Hitler's private secretary, who thought it his duty to inform Hitler that Goebbels had not told him the whole truth about the Grynszpan case. It is probably not coincidental that the Riom Trial was called off on 4 April, after Blum and the other defendants had used it as a platform to attack the Vichy regime. This no doubt helped influence Hitler against a further risky show trial. In any event, by the beginning of May 1942 it was clear to all that Hitler did not favour a trial. The matter was raised on and off for several months more, but without Hitler's approval there could be no progress. In recognition of this, Grynszpan was moved in September to the prison at Magdeburg.

Grynszpan's fate after September 1942 is not known. Since his trial was never actually called off, merely postponed indefinitely, he was probably kept alive in case circumstances changed and a trial became possible. He was still alive in late 1943 or early 1944, when he was interrogated by Adolf Eichmann at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Ron Roisen reports rumours that he was still alive in Magdeburg Prison in January 1945, but there is no definitive evidence of this. There were 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. Having been deported to Poland, they escaped in 1939 to the Soviet Union. After the war they migrated to Israel. Sendel Grynszpan, Herschel's father, was present at the Israeli premiere in 1952 of Sir Michael Tippett's oratorio about Grynszpan, A Child of Our Time.