Herschel Grynszpan - Paris To Berlin

Paris To Berlin

From November 1938 to June 1940 Grynszpan was imprisoned in the Fresnes Prison in Paris while legal arguments continued over the conduct of his trial. The defence sought to delay the trial as long as possible by making procedural difficulties, in the hope that the publicity surrounding the vom Rath murder would quiet down and the trial would be less politicized. But the prosecution was also in no hurry.

The heavyhanded actions of the Germans did not help. A German lawyer, Friedrich Grimm, was sent to Paris, supposedly representing the vom Rath family, but in fact was widely known to be an agent of Goebbels. Grimm tried to argue that Grynszpan should be extradited to Germany, even though he was not a German citizen - there was no way the French government could agree to this. The Germans argued that Grynszpan had acted as the agent of a Jewish conspiracy, and their fruitless efforts to find evidence to support this contention further delayed the trial. The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 made it impossible for the Germans to participate further (although they engaged a Swiss lawyer to represent their interests), and also causing the French authorities to lose interest in prosecuting Grynszpan. Grynszpan applied for release from detention so that he could join the French Foreign Legion, but this was refused.

Once the war broke out, Moro-Giafferi changed his tactics and demanded an immediate trial, confident that the anti-German mood, and the inability of the Germans to present evidence, would result in Grynszpan's acquittal. But the investigating judge had joined the army, the Ministry of Justice did not want the trial to proceed, and the Swiss lawyer engaged by the Germans employed various delaying tactics. As a result, there was no trial, and Grynszpan was still in prison when the invading German Army approached Paris in June 1940.

The French authorities evacuated the inhabitants of the Paris prisons to the south in early June. Grynszpan was sent first to Orléans, from where he was sent by bus to the prison at Bourges. En route, however, the convoy was attacked by German aircraft. Some prisoners were killed, while others escaped in the confusion. One of these was apparently Grynszpan, since he was not among the survivors who arrived in Bourges. But Grynszpan had not escaped; he had merely been left behind. Remarkably, instead of making good his escape, he walked to Bourges and turned himself in to the police. From Bourges he was sent to make his own way to Toulouse. Presumably the French expected him to disappear, but he duly presented himself at the prison in Toulouse and was incarcerated. Grynszpan had no money, knew no one in France, and spoke little French. Apparently he believed he would be safer in a French prison than wandering the countryside.

The Nazis, however, were on Grynszpan's trail. Friedrich Grimm, by now an official of the German Foreign Ministry, and SS Sturmbannführer Karl Bömelburg arrived in Paris on 15 June with orders to find Grynszpan. They followed him to Orléans, then to Bourges, where they learned that he had been sent to Toulouse, which was in the Unoccupied Zone to be run by the authorities of Vichy France. France had surrendered on 22 June, and one of the terms of the armistice gave the Germans the right to demand that France surrender all "Germans named by the German Government" to the German occupation authorities. Although Grynszpan was not a German citizen, Germany had been his last place of legal residence, and the Vichy authorities made no objection to Grimm's formal demand that he be handed over. On 18 July Grynszpan was delivered to Bömelburg at the border of the Occupied Zone. He was driven back to Paris, flown to Berlin and locked up in the Gestapo headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.