Herschel Grynszpan

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Herschel Feibel Grynszpan after his arrest by the French police

Herschel (Hermann) Feibel Grynszpan (also Grünspan ; born on March 28, 1921 in Hanover ; died probably between 1942 and the end of the war in 1945) was a Polish citizen of Jewish faith who was born and raised in the Weimar Republic and who lived in Paris on November 7, 1938 committed an assassination attempt on the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath . This act served the National Socialist regime as a pretext to launch pogroms under the motto “Revenge for the murder of vom Rath” against the Jewish population in Germany.

Grynszpan had emigrated from Germany to France in 1935 at the age of 14 because there was no future for him as a Jew in Germany. In early November 1938, he was told in Paris by a postcard to his sister from Poland, his parents and his siblings, along with tens of thousands of other Polish Jews by the German authorities as part of the so-called Poland action under inhumane conditions in the no man's land between Poland and Germany in Zbąszyń (German : Bentschen) had been forcibly deported. Herschel Grynszpan was so outraged by this that he went to the German embassy in Paris and fired several shots with a revolver at the embassy employee vom Rath, who died of his injuries two days later. With the attack, Herschel Grynszpan wanted to avenge the humiliation and bad treatment of his parents, relatives and friends.

First the French judiciary wanted to try him in France. The war between Germany and France prevented that . After Germany's victory, Grynszpan was secretly brought to Germany to the Gestapo prison in Berlin. At first the Nazis wanted to open a show trial against Grynszpan, because according to their anti-Semitic prejudices, only a Jewish world conspiracy could be behind the act of Grynszpan, which the Nazis wanted to expose. When the trial was discontinued shortly before its opening, Herschel Grynszpan was taken to the Magdeburg prison in 1942 and "probably murdered" there.

childhood

Herschel Grynszpan was born in Hanover in 1921 to Polish-Jewish parents and was a Polish citizen. The father Sendel Grynszpan was a tailor and married to Ryfka, née Silberberg. Grynszpan had four siblings: Sophia Helena (* 1914), Mordechaj, called Markus , (* August 29, 1919), Salomon (* 1920) and Esther Beile, called Berta , (* January 31, 1916). The family had moved from Russian Poland to Hanover in April 1911 and finally lived at Burgstrasse 36.

Herschel attended the Citizens' School I or the elementary school Burgstrasse 22 until 1935 without graduating. In Hanover he was a member of the Zionist group Misrachi and the sports club Bar Kochba . According to his teachers, he was above average intelligent, but had no desire to work. With the support of his family and the Hanoverian Jewish community, Grynszpan visited the rabbinical training institute ( yeshiva ) in Frankfurt am Main on Christgasse to learn Hebrew, among other things. Apparently this five-year training did not appeal to him because he broke it off after eleven months. In the meantime, the discrimination against Jews in Germany with the “ Jewish boycott ”, the “ professional civil servants law ”, the law against overcrowding in German schools and universities and other anti-Semitic laws had already taken on very concrete forms, so that Grynszpan could not find a job or an apprenticeship. He then tried to emigrate to Palestine , but received a provisional negative decision due to his age; he should apply again in a year.

France

In July 1936, at the age of 15, Grynszpan traveled with legal documents - a Polish passport and a return visa to Germany required by Belgium, which allowed re-entry until April 1, 1937 - to see his uncle Wolf Grynszpan in Brussels Waiting for visa to enter Palestine. His uncle received him rather coolly when he discovered that Herschel was penniless. He was only allowed to take 10 marks abroad with him and didn't have any more money. Herschel therefore accepted the offer of his other uncle, Abraham Grynszpan from Paris, to move in with him. Friends of Wolf Grynszpan illegally smuggled Herschel across the border into France in September 1936 because they had to assume that he would be refused entry through official channels. When he arrived in Paris he was ill - he suffered from stomach pains and frequent vomiting. Grynszpan was short in stature, only 1.54 m tall and weighed only about 45 kg.

Grynszpan was an Orthodox Jew and regularly attended church services. Most of the people living near his uncle's family were also Jews. Their main language was Yiddish , but German was also spoken. Herschel Grynszpan occasionally supported his uncle at work, but he did not have a regular job. He met up with friends, often went to the movies and visited places that were classified as homosexual.

Grynszpan tried in vain to obtain a residence permit in France for over two years . Efforts to return to his family in Hanover failed due to the protest of the Hanover police chief , who refused to allow Grynszpan to travel back to Hanover because his papers were allegedly not in order. The Polish passport was also no longer valid at the end of January 1938. In August 1938 Grynszpan was finally served with the deportation order from France, so that he found himself in a completely hopeless situation. Grynszpan should have left France by August 15, but his uncle hid him in an attic in another house in Paris. Grynszpan had no job, was wanted by the police and had to go into hiding - a hopeless situation.

Expulsion of Polish Jews from Nuremberg in October 1938; 15,000 people across the Reich were expelled as Polish Jews.

In the meantime, his parents and siblings - who were still Polish citizens, although the family had lived in Germany for 27 years - were on 28/29. In October 1938 she was arrested in a nationwide violent action, the Poland Action , and forced to immediately give up her residence and existence in Hanover without any preparation. They had been deported and deported at Bentschen across the German border in the direction of Poland. About 17,000 Jews were affected by this mass deportation. The completely unprepared people were first turned back by Poles and therefore sometimes stayed outdoors in the no man's land between the German and Polish borders. Others were allowed into the country with no problems. It had been reported all over the world and also in the Paris press. The deported people were completely helpless. After the Grynszpans got to Poland, they could write a card to Paris. On November 3, Grynszpan received a postcard from his sister Berta, in which she described how the whole family had been forcibly and ambushed by the police, leaving behind all their belongings, unprepared and without any means. The family was completely destitute in a camp in Zbąszyń, Poland . Berta asked her brother to send them money to Poland. When Grynszpan received his sister's card, he was utterly desperate, because he himself was in dire straits.

“Dear Hermann,
you must have heard of our great misfortune. I want to tell you exactly how it went. … On Thursday evening a Sipo [security officer] came to us and said we had to go to the police and bring our passports. As we stood, we all went to the police together with the Sipo. Our whole area was already gathered there.

From there they brought us all in the police car to the Rusthaus [an inn]. … They didn't say what was going on, but we saw that we were done. Each of us has an ID card. H. presumably deportation warrant] in hand until October 29th, one has to leave the country. We were no longer allowed to go home. I begged to be let me go home to at least get some stuff. Then I went with a Sipo and packed the most necessary items of clothing in a suitcase. That's all I saved We are without a penny of money. [The following passage deleted, probably: Can't you and uncle send something to Lodz]?

Greetings and kisses from everyone

Berta "

- Berta Grynszpan

Assassination attempt on Ernst vom Rath

Herschel Grynszpan after his arrest

After Grynszpan had received his sister's card, he was able to find further dramatic descriptions of the deportations on November 4th in the Paris-based Yiddish newspaper Haynt (Journée Parisienne) . What he read made him even more concerned for his family. On November 6th, he asked his uncle to send money to his parents immediately. When Abraham hesitated, an argument broke out in the course of which Grynszpan left his uncle's family, taking his savings with him.

Grynszpan stayed in a cheap hotel and wrote a suicide note to his parents, which he put in his pocket. On November 7, 1938, he bought a revolver in an arms store for 235 francs. Then he went to the German embassy in the Palais Beauharnais and asked to speak to an embassy secretary. The porter's wife referred him to the embassy secretary vom Rath, the younger of the two officials on duty at the time. The other would have been the secretary of the embassy, Ernst Achenbach , who was late for work that day. The ambassador Johannes von Welczeck had just left the embassy for a morning walk when Grynszpan arrived. The clerk Nagorka let Grynszpan step into Rath's office without registration formalities, where both were then alone. The historian Hans-Jürgen Döscher concluded that Rath and Grynszpan were acquainted with each other, whereas the Swiss historian Raphael Gross and most other researchers consider the meeting of Grynszpan and vom Rath to be a mere coincidence. Grynszpan immediately shot Rath five times with his weapon, hitting two bullets, one level with the sternum and the other in the abdomen. The injuries were so severe that Rath succumbed to them two days later. Before that, Hitler had sent his personal physician Karl Brandt and the surgeon Georg Magnus to Paris to treat Rath. According to the police protocol, Grynszpan vom Rath insulted him with the expression “sale boche” (“dirty Germans”) and proclaimed that he was acting on behalf of 12,000 persecuted Jews. He expressed himself in a similar way in the farewell letter found on him to his parents: his heart bleeding when he heard of their fate, he had to protest so that the whole world could find out about it. Grynszpan allowed himself to be arrested at the scene of the crime without attempting to escape (Rath hit him with a punch and left the room calling for help) and explained his actions to the French examining magistrate in this way. He denied an intention to kill and thoughts of revenge in later interrogations and in a letter to his parents in custody. Since Grynszpan was a minor at the time of the crime, he was transferred to the Fresnes juvenile prison near Paris.

Ernst vom Rath, born in 1909, studied law, passed his first state examination in law in the spring of 1932 and then did his legal clerkship. He joined the NSDAP in 1932 and the SA in April 1933 . In 1934 he was accepted into the Foreign Service . He had completed a year of preparatory service in Paris as the personal secretary of his uncle Roland Köster , the German ambassador to France. In June 1936, Rath had passed the diplomatic-consular examination in Berlin. Rath had then spent a year at the German Consulate General in Calcutta, but had to return to Germany because of an illness. This disease appears to have been rectal gonorrhea , probably acquired through homosexual intercourse. He chose Jewish doctors in Berlin to treat this disease, presumably to reduce the likelihood of reporting or denunciation. Rumors of vom Rath's homosexuality played a role in the preparations for the Grynszpan trial in both France and Germany and in the early reception of the case in the Federal Republic, with the sensational journalist Michael Graf Soltikow particularly prominent, the Rath and Grynszpan one alleged homosexual relationship and was therefore convicted by a Munich court in 1960. From July 13, 1938, Rath was back at the German embassy, ​​where he was appointed legation secretary on October 18.

Penal sanctions in France

The French authorities initiated a lawsuit against Grynszpan; Coroner Tesniere closed a lawsuit against Grynszpan on November 7th for attempted murder. After Rath's death on November 9, 1938, the charge was extended to premeditated murder. The French relatives of Grynszpan, Abraham and Chawa Grynszpan, were sentenced on November 29, 1938 to four months' imprisonment and a fine because the court believed they had violated the law on foreigners through the support of Grynszpan.

The German side was also preparing for the trial. On November 8th, Goebbels appointed the lawyer Friedrich Grimm to represent the German Reich, a legal advisor to the Reich and an expert in propaganda tasks aimed at inciting Jews. Grimm was supposed to protect the interests of the German Reich in the von Rath murder. For November 11, 1938, Goebbels set a meeting of a process planning group in the Propaganda Ministry under the direction of Government Councilor Wolfgang Diewerge . Participants were representatives of the Foreign Office, the NSDAP / foreign organization and Friedrich Grimm. Grimm submitted that an extradition of Grynszpan could not be expected and that the trial would definitely take place in France. At the meeting it was decided that Grimm should influence the process and represent the interests of the parents and the brother vom Rath in a secondary lawsuit . That was only possible together with French lawyers, whom Grimm was asked to select.

Goebbels intervened in the attack because he wanted to turn this process into a propaganda battle for Germany. The aim was to prove that a Jewish world conspiracy was waging war against Germany and that it had organized the attack. German anti-Jewish policy should be understood as a defense against the Jewish attack around the world. In this way, in Germany and abroad, understanding for the events of the Reichspogromnacht and the further oppression of the Jews in Europe was to be awakened. Grynszpan is directed by this "Jewish world conspiracy". According to the propaganda of the National Socialists, this also stood behind the French liberal democratic press, which had indoctrinated the young Grynszpan. According to Nazi propaganda, the attack was also intended to damage Franco-German relations. At the time, the relationship between the two states was tense, the Munich Agreement was only about a month old. Grimm immediately drove to Paris. There he was informed that the defender of Grynszpans, Maître Vincent de Moro-Giafferi of the French League against Anti-Semitism, the Ligue Internationale Contre l'Antisémitisme (LICA), wanted to invite Grynszpan's parents from Poland to trial in order to tell them about the to testify to German anti-Jewish actions. Grimm intervened in Poland, so that the Polish government, itself anti-Semitic, forbade the parents to leave the country. Grimm constantly commuted between Germany and France and influenced the preparation of the process there.

The start of the trial was delayed until the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 , resulted in a completely new situation. Because of the change in mood among the French population, the local judiciary would have acquitted Grynszpan, especially since Germany, as an opponent of the war, would not have been able to take part in the trial. Grimm, however, insisted on the Propaganda Ministry to manipulate the process from a neutral foreign country. Entrusted with this task, he went to the German Embassy in Bern for a few months during the seat of the war and stayed in contact with the French investigative authorities through Switzerland and the lawyer Guinand. For this purpose he was even appointed Consul General of the German Reich. Despite the state of war, Grimm succeeded in obtaining a visa for Guinand from the French consul general in Bern and his appointment as representative of the German Reich in the planned process. Guinand was even received in Paris by the deputy minister of justice on the instructions of the Justice Minister Bonnet, who was unable to attend. The result of these negotiations was that the trial was suspended , but Grynszpan remained in prison.

The attack was frowned upon in large parts of the Jewish community and also in France, not least because of fears that the Nazis would use it as a pretext for retaliation, which the events fully confirmed. The Jews tried to portray Grynszpan as a madman. This representation had a long lasting effect and can be found, for example, in relevant statements by Hannah Arendt in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem from 1963.

Extradition to Germany

Despite his youth, Grynszpan remained imprisoned without trial for around 20 months, until the German victory over France. The French had refused Grynszpan's request to be allowed to fight the Germans on the French side. As soon as the future ambassador Otto Abetz and his team, which also included the law professor Friedrich Grimm, arrived in Paris on June 15, the day after the German troops marched in, a search was made for Grynszpan, which was a day before the embassy staff arrived a Gestapo unit under Helmut Bone came to Paris. A Sturmbannführer of this unit, Karl Bömelburg , was also the head of a group of the Secret Field Police . Bömelburg and Grimm now had the order to take Herschel Grynszpan prisoner. To do this, Grimm had the Secret Field Police search the police and court departments the next day and confiscate all procedural files. All Jewish organizations and all law firms involved in Grynszpan were searched. Grimm even appropriated the files of Grynszpan's defense attorney Moro-Giafferis.

On June 19, Grimm reported to the Foreign Ministry that Grynszpan had been "illegally" removed from prison in Paris. In fact, Grynszpan had been sent to the unoccupied south with other prisoners and was initially released when the train was bombed. Penniless and without sufficient language skills, however, he did not succeed in going into hiding. Rather, he faced the French authorities again: first in Bourges prison, where a prosecutor let him go, and then in Toulouse.

Grimm found Grynszpan in southern France and asked the French Minister of Justice to extradite him. At the same time, the Federal Foreign Office submitted an extradition request to the Armistice Commission . On July 18, 1940, the French handed Grynszpan on the border between the unoccupied and German occupation zones to the Germans, who took him to Berlin in the Gestapo prison in the Reich Main Security Office at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse  8. This extradition violated the armistice treaty and provisions of international law, because Grynszpan was not a German citizen and the act had been committed before the German invasion of French soil.

Now, finally, a political show trial based on the Nazi model was to take place. His stage was to be the People's Court and the Reich Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels was to participate in it. The aim was to prove the existence of the "Jewish world conspiracy" that caused the destruction of Germany in the spirit of the world and the world war. Lawyer Grimm and Wolfgang Diewerge were co-planners of the process . Grynszpan now threatened to testify that he knew his victim vom Rath from the Parisian gay scene. In doing so, he thwarted the strategy of the National Socialists. It is possible that Grynszpan used a defense tactic from his Paris lawyer Moro-Giafferi. The prosecutors now had to fear that Grynszpan would bring up the alleged homosexuality of von Rath and possibly other National Socialists in Paris in the planned trial. Grynszpan was also able to “cast doubt on the legality of his extradition”. On Hitler's orders , the trial was terminated in July 1942. Grynszpan first came to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Around September 26, 1942, he was taken to Magdeburg prison.

What happened to him in detail afterwards is not exactly clear. But it is mostly assumed that he died sometime between 1942/1943 and the end of the war. The historian Ron Roizen, who dealt with the further fate of Grynszpan in 1986 and also relied on an examination by the French doctor Alain Cuenot in 1982, cites a letter from Fritz Dahms, an official in the Foreign Office who was involved in the Grynszpan case in 1942 was concerned, to the historian Helmut Heiber . This letter says that Dahm heard that Grynszpan died shortly before the end of the war. He could not remember any details and the Foreign Office would not have been officially informed about such matters at this point. He also states that as early as the 1960s the examining magistrate in Munich could find no reference to Grynszpan after 1942 in the files in the Federal Archives that were not yet publicly accessible at the time. In his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, Adolf Eichmann stated that he probably had Grynszpan interrogated by an employee in 1943 and then spoke to Herschel Grynszpan himself. But he knew nothing about his further fate.

Herschel Grynszpan was officially declared dead by a court in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1960 at the request of his parents. Previously, in some newspaper reports and in a publication by the historian Helmut Heiber, one could read that Grynszpan had survived the war and lived under a different name in Paris. This view has been adopted by several other authors. But Grynszpan was nowhere to be found. As early as 1972, the historian Rita Thalmann considered Heiber's hypothesis to be “hardly credible, since his act was statute-barred under French law and he had nothing to fear”. There was no reason to hide. In 1981, however, Heiber stated to the historian Ron Roizen that he had fallen victim to uncertain sources at the time and that he is now assuming that Grynszpan will die before the end of the war. As mentioned above, Grynszpan's last mention in German files so far dated from September 1942. Herschel Grynszpan's parents assumed that Herschel had been killed by the National Socialists.

Herschel's parents and brother survived the Holocaust. After their expulsion to Poland in 1938, they were able to flee to the Soviet Union . They emigrated to Israel after the war . Father and brother testified in the Eichmann trial in 1961 . At the end of 2016, the presumption of the archive manager of the Jewish Museum Vienna, Christa Proksch, became known in the press that Grynszpan might still have lived in Bamberg in 1946. Scientists have been investigating this thesis ever since.

Consequences of the attack in Germany

Grynszpan's assassination was in Germany at the behest of Joseph Goebbels lead story in all the papers and served as a pretext for state-wide staged in Germany and Austria pogroms , the November pogroms in 1938 or the so-called "Kristallnacht". However, the first riots had already broken out on the evening of November 7th in Kassel and the surrounding area. A few hours after the death of von Raths became known on the evening of November 9th, the NSDAP and SA took a prepared and concerted action against Jewish citizens and their possessions: Troops of civilly dressed SA people and party members were on the way, equipped with poles, knives, Daggers, revolvers, axes, large hammers and crowbars. They broke into synagogues, set them on fire and smashed the windows of Jewish shops with poles. Then they broke into the shops, looting and destroying them. Squads of thugs attacked Jews in their homes with the same brutality. Unless opened, they were forcibly broken into and devastated. Found money was confiscated, savings books and securities were taken away. The Jews were mistreated and humiliated, including women and children. A total of around 400 people were murdered, in addition to suicides, around 30,000 men were deported to concentration camps as " action Jews ". Around 7500 shops and almost all synagogues (around 1400) were burned down or otherwise destroyed. As a mockery of the pogrom victims, the Jews were also forced to make an additional “contribution payment” of one billion Reichsmarks in an “Ordinance on Atonement” issued on November 12, 1938 .

Memory and references to art

Herschel Grynszpan was born in Hanover and lived in the city until 1936. His name can be found among the thousands of engraved names on the memorial for the murdered Jews of Hanover on Opernplatz. There he is listed as missing. On March 22, 2010 the artist Gunter Demnig laid a stumbling block for Herschel Grynszpan (Grünspan) and one for his sister Esther at the last residence of the Grynszpan family in Hanover . The former house at Burgstrasse 36 no longer exists today; the historical museum is located on site today .

The events surrounding Herschel Grynszpan inspired the English composer Michael Tippett to write his oratorio A Child of Our Time .

After the City Council of Hanover had decided on an intergroup proposal at the end of 2009 to put up a separate city plaque to commemorate Herschel Grynszpan, this Hanoverian culture and school officer at the time, Marlis Drevermann , unveiled on September 9, 2013 at the Hanover Historical Museum, around the location of the former home of the Grynszpan family.

On November 6, 2014, a golden work of art was unveiled in the “Golden Town Hall Passage” in Steyr , Upper Austria. This "Crystal Day" object was created by the Austrian concept artist Johannes Angerbauer-Goldhoff in 1998 for the 60th anniversary of the so-called Reichskristallnacht . The gold unites the traces of 38 people who suffered displacement, persecution and violence. A positive symbol of “never again!” Was created. The second object of the “Kristalltag Diptych” shows the ungilded portrait of Herschel Grynszpan in a crystalline structure. This work of art is dedicated to the youth of today and tomorrow and should find its permanent place in an international cultural venue as a positive symbol of avoiding and recognizing manipulation, delusion and seduction of young people. The Crystal Day diptych was shown in the international GOLD exhibition in the Lower Belvedere, Vienna, in 2012.

  • Memorial for the murdered Jews of Hanover on the city's Opernplatz, above the engraving for Herschel Grynszpan (photo montage)

  • Gunter Demnig laying the stumbling blocks for Herschel Grynszpan and his sister Esther, 2010

  • Stumbling block immediately after installation, 2010

  • City sign at the location of the former home of the Grynszpan family, today the Hanover Historical Museum in Burgstrasse at the corner of Roßmühle

  • Item no. 1 of the “Crystal Day” diptych. Detailed view of the crystal structure

See also

literature

Movie

  • The short, brave life of Herschel Grünspan. (OT: Livrez-nous Grynszpan. ) Documentation and docu-drama , France, 2007, 76 min., Director: Joël Calmettes, production: arte , production: September, German first broadcast: October 29, 2008. Arte program information

Web links

Commons : Herschel Grynszpan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Herschel Grünspan city table unveiled at the Hanover Historical Museum. In: Hannover-Enthaben.de. Press release of the City of Hanover, September 10, 2013, accessed on November 7, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Volker Koop : In Hitler's hand. Special prisoners and honorary prisoners of the SS. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20580-5 , p. 21.
  3. ^ Lutz van Dijk : The assassin. Herschel Grynszpan and the events around the "Kristallnacht" (= Rororo-Rotfuchs , Vol. 527). Original edition, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1988, ISBN 978-3-499-20527-9 and ISBN 3-499-20527-0 , p. 28 and other ( limited preview in Google book search).
  4. ^ A b Klaus Mlynek: The "Reichskristallnacht" . In: Historisches Museum am Hohen Ufer (Hrsg.): Reichskristallnacht in Hanover. An exhibition on the 40th anniversary of November 9, 1938 . Hanover 1978, p. 58.
  5. ^ Friedrich Karl Kaul : The case of Herschel Grynszpan . P. 12.
  6. ^ Rita Thalmann, Emanuel Feinermann: Die Kristallnacht. Athenaeum, Frankfurt 1988, paperback, ISBN 3-610-04708-9 , p. 46 ff.
  7. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher : "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. Revised and expanded paperback edition, 3rd edition. Econ, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-612-26753-1 , p. 63 ff.
  8. ^ Mass expulsions of Polish Jews from Germany . In: Pariser Zeitung , October 29, 1938, p. 1, available in the Exil collection of the DNB.
  9. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher : "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. Expanded and revised paperback edition, 3rd edition. Econ, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-612-26753-1 , p. 60.
  10. ↑ Klaus Mlynek: The "Reichskristallnacht" . In: Historisches Museum am Hohen Ufer (Hrsg.): Reichskristallnacht in Hanover. An exhibition on the 40th return of November 9, 1938 , Hanover 1978, p. 59.
  11. ↑ Raphael Gross November 1938. The disaster before the disaster . Beck, Munich 2013, p. 18.
  12. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher : "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. Expanded and revised paperback edition, 3rd edition. Econ, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-612-26753-1 , p. 69 ff.
  13. ↑ You are a dirty German and now I am handing you the document on behalf of 12,000 Jews with which he drew his pistol. Gross November 1938 , p. 19
  14. ↑ Gross November 1938 , p. 20.
  15. ↑ Ernst vom Rath. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  16. ↑ Affidavit of his treating Jewish doctor on August 25, 1963, Gross November 1938 , p. 21.
  17. ↑ The Dead Lives, Der Spiegel, No. 36, August 28, 1960
  18. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher : "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. Expanded and revised paperback edition, 3rd edition. Econ, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-612-26753-1 , p. 66 ff.
  19. ^ Rita Thalmann, Emanuel Feinermann : Die Kristallnacht . Revised edition by the author. Paperback, Frankfurt 1988, ISBN 3-610-04708-9 , p. 58 ff.
  20. ↑ Gross November 1938 , p. 24.
  21. ↑ Friedrich Karl Kaul : The case of Herschel Grynszpan , ... p. 45.
  22. ↑ Friedrich Karl Kaul: The case of Herschel Grynszpan , ... p. 107 ff.
  23. ^ David H. Weinberg: A community on trial: the jews of Paris in the 1930s . Chicago University Press 1977.
  24. ↑ Gerald Schwab: The Day The Holocaust began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan . New York 1990, p. 124 f.
  25. ^ Friedrich Karl Kaul: The case of Herschel Grynszpan , p. 59.
  26. ↑ Gerald Schwab: The Day The Holocaust began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan . New York 1990, p. 128.
  27. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher : "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. Expanded and revised paperback edition, 3rd edition. Econ, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-612-26753-1 , p. 162.
  28. ↑ a b Hans-Jürgen Döscher : "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. Expanded and revised paperback edition, 3rd edition. Econ, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-612-26753-1 , p. 165.
  29. ↑ Joseph Goebbels , diary entry of January 24, 1942, quoted in Heiber, Vierteljahrshefte f. Zeitgesch., Volume 5, 1957, p. 148: The Grünspan murder trial is now up for debate again. Grünspan found the impudent argument that he had a homosexual relationship with the shot councilor vom Rath. That is, of course, an outrageous lie; at least it is cleverly conceived, and if it were brought forward in public it would certainly become the main argument in all of the adversarial propaganda .
  30. ↑ This is what Moro-Giafferi said in 1947. Heiber Vierteljahrshefte f. Zeitgesch., 5, 1957, 149.
  31. ↑ Gerald Schwab: The Day The Holocaust began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan ; New York 1990; P. 184.
  32. ↑ Ron Roizen: Herschel Grynszpan: the Fate of A Forgotten Assassin, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 1, 1986, No.2. Pp. 217-228.
  33. ↑ Eichmann Trial: Transcript. In: Nizkor Project. Retrieved on November 7, 2018 (G Data Internet Security reports a virus.).
  34. ↑ Helmut Heiber: The Grünspan case. (PDF; 1.8 MB) In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Issue 2, 1957, p. 172 , accessed on November 7, 2018 .
  35. ↑ Kurt R. Grossmann: Herschel Gruenspan is alive! In: Aufbau , May 10, 1957, pp. 1 and 5 f.
    Grünspan attack: The dead man lives. In: Der Spiegel 36/1960. August 28, 1960, pp. 22-25 , accessed on November 7, 2018 (report on the trial of Soltikov, who also claimed that Grynszpan was still alive and asked to be heard as a witness).
  36. ^ Rita Thalmann , Emanuel Feinermann: Die Kristallnacht. Athenaeum, Frankfurt 1988, ISBN 3-610-04708-9 . P. 78. The book was published in France as: La Nuit de Cristal. Paris 1972.
  37. ^ Rita Thalmann , Emanuel Feinermann: Die Kristallnacht. Athenaeum, Frankfurt 1988, ISBN 3-610-04708-9 . P. 78.
  38. ↑ Benjamin Moscovici: The riddle about Herrschel Grynszpan. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . December 31, 2016, accessed November 7, 2018 .
  39. ↑ Pariser Tageszeitung , November 11, 1938, No. 839, p. 1 as an example of a German exile newspaper, available online in the Exile archive collection in the German National Library in Frankfurt.
  40. ↑ Gross November 1938 , p. 21.
  41. ↑ City table for Herschel Grünspan (Grynszpan). Intergroup application dated November 16, 2009 on the website of the SPD council group in Hanover, accessed on September 14, 2013.
  42. ↑ Kristalltag Object No. 1: Herschel Grynszpan in crystal structure…… art work in progress… In: Kristalltag International. October 14, 2015, accessed November 7, 2018 .
  43. ↑ The Crystal Day Diptych on loan in the Orangery of the Lower Belvedere. In: Social Gold Kiss. November 28, 2014, accessed November 7, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Grynszpan, Herschel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grynszpan, Herschel Feibel (full name); Verdigris, Herschel Feibel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish resistance fighter, assassin
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH between 1942 and 1945
PLACE OF DEATH uncertain: Magdeburg