Herschel Feibel Grynszpan (Yiddish: הערשל פײַבל גרינשפּאן; German: Hermann Grünspan; 28 March 1921 – last rumoured to be alive in 1945, declared dead in 1960) was a Polish-Jewish expatriate born and raised in Weimar Germany who shot the Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on November 7, 1938 in Paris. The Nazis used this assassination as a pretext to launch Kristallnacht, "The Night of Broken Glass", the pogrom of 9–10 November 1938. Grynszpan was seized by the Gestapo after the Fall of France and brought to Germany; his further fate remains unknown.
It is generally assumed that Grynszpan did not survive World War II, and he was declared dead in absentia by the West German government in 1960. This was done at the request of his parents, who said they had not heard anything from him in over 15 years, which was out of character for him. However, this remains a matter of dispute: Kurt Grossman claimed in 1957 that Grynszpan lived in Paris under another identity. A photograph of a man resembling Grynszpan was cited in 2016 as evidence to support the claim that he was still alive in Bamberg, Germany, on 3 July 1946.
Early years Grynszpan was born on 28 March 1921 in Hanover, Germany. His parents, Zindel and Rivka, were Polish Jews who had emigrated in 1911 and settled in Hanover. Zindel opened a tailor's shop, from which he earned a modest living. Because of the German Citizenship Law of 1913, based on the principles of jus sanguinis, Grynszpan was never a German citizen despite his birth in Germany.Steinweis, Alan. "The Trials of Herschel Grynszpan: Anti-Jewish Policy and German Propaganda, 1938-1942" pages 471-488 from German Studies Review, Volume 31, Issue #3, October 2008, pg. 472 The family became Polish citizens after the First World War and retained that status during their years in Germany. Grynszpan was the youngest of six children, only three of whom survived childhood. His parents' first child was stillborn in 1912. Their second child, daughter Sophie Helena (born in 1914), died of scarlet fever in 1928. A daughter (Esther, also known as "Berta") was born on 31 January 1916 (the Nazis murdered her in 1942 or 1943), and a son (Mordechai) on 29 August 1919. A fifth child, Salomone, was born in 1920 and died in 1931 in a road accident.
The Grynszpan family was known as Ostjuden ("Eastern Jews") by the Germans and many West European Jews. The "Ostjuden" usually spoke Yiddish and tended to be more religiously observant, impoverished, and less educated. Herschel dropped out of school at age 14.Schmitteroth, Linda & Rosteck, Mary Kay People of the Holocaust, U-X-L: Detroit (1998), pg. 198 Grynszpan was considered by his teachers to be intelligent, if rather lazy, a student who never seemed to try to excel at his studies. He later complained that his teachers disliked him because he was an Ostjude, and he was treated as an outcast by his German teachers and fellow students. As a child and a teenager, Grynszpan was known for his violent temper and his tendency to respond to antisemitic insults with his fists and was frequently suspended from school for fighting.
Paris Grynszpan attended a state primary school until 1935 (when he was 14) and later said that he left school because Jewish students were already facing discrimination. He was an intelligent, sensitive and easily-provoked youth whose few close friends found him too touchy. Grynszpan was an active member of the Jewish youth sports club, Bar-Kochba Hanover. When he left school, his parents decided that there was no future for him in Germany and tried to arrange for his emigration to the British Mandate of Palestine. With financial assistance from Hanover's Jewish community, Grynszpan was sent to a yeshiva (rabbinical seminary) in Frankfurt and studied Hebrew and the Torah; he was, by all accounts, more religious than his parents. After eleven months, he left the yeshiva, returned to Hanover and applied to emigrate to Palestine. The local Palestine emigration office told Grynszpan that he was too young and would have to wait a year. He and his parents decided that he should go to Paris and live with his uncle and aunt, Abraham and Chawa Grynszpan, instead. Grynszpan obtained a Polish passport and German residence permit and received permission to leave Germany and go to Belgium, where another uncle (Wolf Grynszpan) lived. He did not intend to remain in Belgium and entered France illegally in September 1936. (Grynszpan could not enter France legally because he had no financial support; Jews were not permitted to take money from Germany.)
In Paris, he lived in a small Yiddish-speaking enclave of Polish Orthodox Jews. Grynszpan met few people outside it, learning only a few words of French in two years. He initially lived a carefree, bohemian life as a "poet of the streets", spending his days aimlessly wandering and reciting Yiddish poems to himself. Grynszpan's two greatest interests, other than exploring Paris, were spending time in coffeehouses and going to the cinema.Schwab, Gerald The Day the Holocaust Began, New York: Praeger, 1990, pp. 57-58. He spent this period unsuccessfully trying to become a legal resident of France because he could neither work nor study legally. Grynszpan's German re-entry permit expired in April 1937 and his Polish passport expired in January 1938, leaving him without papers. The Paris Police Prefecture ruled in July 1937 that he had no basis for remaining in France, and he was ordered to leave the following month. Grynszpan had no desire to return to Germany.The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan, page 194 In March 1938, Poland passed a law depriving Polish citizens who had lived continuously abroad for more than five years of their citizenship.Commentary by Jerzy Tomaszewski Grynszpan became a stateless person as a result, and continued to live illegally in Paris. Lonely and living in poverty on the margins of French life as an illegal immigrant, with no real skills, he grew increasingly desperate and angry as his situation worsened.
Grynszpan was afraid to accept a job because of his illegal immigrant status and depended for support on his uncle Abraham, who was also extremely poor. His refusal to work caused tension with his uncle and aunt, who frequently told him that he was a drain on their finances and had to take a job despite the risk of deportation. Beginning in October 1938 Grynszpan was in hiding from the French police who sought to deport him, a stressful situation. The few who knew him in Paris described him as a shy, emotional teenager who often wept when he discussed the plight of Jews around the world, especially his beloved family in Germany. Grynszpan came from a close-knit, loving family, and often spoke about his love for his family and how much he missed them.
From exile to assassin The position of Grynszpan's family in Hanover was becoming increasingly precarious; his father's business was failing, and both of his siblings lost their jobs. German authorities announced in August 1938, in response to a Polish decree stripping Polish Jews living abroad of citizenship, that all residence permits for foreigners were being cancelled and would have to be renewed. On 26 October, a few days before the decree was to come into force, the Gestapo was ordered to arrest and deport all Polish Jews in Germany. The Grynszpan family was 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 their deportation during 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! Raus nach Palästina!" ("Out with the Jews! Off to Palestine!")Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem, pg. 228.
When the deportees reached the border, they were forced to walk to the Polish town of Zbąszyń. Poland refused to admit them at first, since the Sanation government had no intention of accepting those whom it had just stripped of Polish citizenship.Longerich, Peter The Holocaust, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2010), pp. 109-110 The "Polish operation" (German: die Polenaktion) ended on 29 October, when the Polish government threatened to begin expelling German nationals from Poland. The Grynszpans and thousands of other Polish-Jewish deportees stranded at the border were fed by the Polish Red Cross.
Conditions for the refugees, trapped in the open on the German-Polish frontier, were extremely poor; according to a British woman who worked with the Red Cross, "I found thousands crowded together in pigsties. The old, the sick and children herded together in the most inhumane conditions ... some actually tried to escape back to Germany and were shot".Gilbert, Martin The Holocaust The Jewish Tragedy, New York: HarperCollins (1987), pg. 68. On 3 November, Grynszpan received a postcard from his sister in Zbąszyn dated 31 October recounting what had happened and (in a line which was crossed out) apparently pleading for help. On 6 November 1938, Grynszpan asked his uncle Abraham to send money to his family. Abraham said he had little to spare and was incurring financial costs and legal risks by harbouring his nephew, an illegal immigrant and unemployed youth. After an argument, Grynszpan walked out of his uncle's house with about 300 francs (an average day's wage in Paris at the time) and spent the night in a cheap hotel. On the morning of 7 November, he wrote a farewell postcard to his parents and put it in his pocket. Grynszpan went to a gun shop in the Rue du Faubourg St Martin, where he bought a 6.35 mm revolver and a box of 25 bullets for 235 francs. He caught the metro to the Solférino station and walked to the German embassy at 78 Rue de Lille (Paris). It is generally believed that Grynszpan wanted to assassinate Johannes von Welczeck, the German ambassador to France.Norden, Margaret. "The American Editorial to the Rise of Adolf Hitler: A Preliminary Consideration", pp. 211-222 from America, American Jews, and the Holocaust: American Jewish History edited by Jeffrey Gurock, London: Routledge (1998), pg. 222. As he entered the embassy Grynszpan walked past von Welczeck, who was leaving for his daily morning walk. At 9:45 am, Grynszpan identified himself as a German resident at the reception desk and asked to see an embassy official; he did not ask for anyone by name. He claimed to be a spy with important intelligence which he had to give to the most senior diplomat available, preferably the ambassador. Unaware that he had just walked past von Welczeck, Grynszpan asked if he could see "His Excellency, the ambassador" to hand over the "most important document" he claimed to have.Kirsch, Jonathan The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan, New York: W.W. Norton, pg. 237. The clerk on duty asked Ernst vom Rath, the junior of the two embassy officials available, to see him. When Grynszpan entered vom Rath's office, vom Rath asked to see the "most important document". Grynszpan pulled out his gun, and shot him five times in the abdomen. According to the French police account, he shouted right before pulling out his gun: "You're a filthy boche! In the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews, here is the document!"
Grynszpan made no attempt to resist or escape, and identified himself truthfully to the French police. He confessed to shooting vom Rath (who was in critical condition in a hospital), and repeated that his motive was to avenge the persecuted Jews. In his pocket was the postcard to his parents; it read, "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 [his German name]".
Aftermath