The assassination of Ernst vom Rath by the Polish Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan, triggered the riots against Jewish business and homes throughout Germany, which occurred on the 9th and 10th of November 1938 – an event known as Kristallnacht (or 'the Night of the Broken Glass' in English).
Herschel Grynszpan was born in Hanover in 1921; his parents had emigrated from Poland ten years earlier. He and his parents wished him to emigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine, but before he reached the necessary age he entered France illegally and lived in Paris (where he had an uncle and aunt) in a small enclave of Polish Jews.
By November 1938, Grynszpan's family in Hanover were under threat of being deported to Poland, as the Nazis reacted to a Polish decree to withdraw citizenship from all Jews living outside Poland. On the morning of 7 November 1938 Grynszpan bought a revolver, and walked into the German embassy in Paris. He asked to see "His Excellency, the ambassador", saying that he wanted to hand over an important document. The ambassador, Count von Welczeck, had in fact just left the building, so Grynszpan was shown into the office of the 29–year–old vom Rath – the less senior of the two Embassy officials available. On entering vom Rath's office, Grynzspan pulled out his revolver and shot him five times in the abdomen.
Grynszpan made no attempt to resist arrest, or to escape. He confessed to shooting vom Rath (who was in a critical condition in hospital), and said he'd done it to avenge the persecuted Jews.
Vom Rath died of his wounds two days later, on 9 November 1938. This was the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putch in 1923 – the greatest day in the Nazi calendar. Word of vom Rath's death reached Hitler that evening, while he was with several key members of the Nazi party at a dinner commemorating the Putsch. After intense discussions, Hitler left the assembly abruptly without giving his usual address. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivered the speech in his place, and said that "the Fürer has decided that ... demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered."
The Kristallnacht pogrom began within hours, throughout Germany. It lasted all that night and into the next day. More than 90 people were killed, more than 30,000 Jews arrested and sent to concentration camps (where over a thousand died of mistreatment before the remainder were released some months later) and thousands of Jewish shops, homes, offices and more than 200 synagogues smashed up or burned. More than 1 billion Reichsmarks' damage to property was reported. Although Jews were able to make insurance claims for their property losses, the Nazi president, Hermann Göring, ruled that claims would not be paid in this instance. These events shocked and horrified world opinion, and helped bring to an end the climate of support for appeasement of Hitler in Britain, France and the United States. They also caused a new wave of Jewish emigration from Germany. Grynszpan was distraught when he learned that his action was used by the Nazis as a justification for further violent assaults on the German Jews (even though his own family had already been deported to the Polish border and was safe from this particular manifestation of Nazi anti–Semitism).
Grynszpan was seized by the Gestapo after the Fall of France, and brought to Germany. His eventual fate remains unknown. It is generally assumed that he did not survive the Second World War, and he was declared dead in 1960.
Theories that Grynszpan and vom Rath were acquainted, and even that they had had a homosexual affair, remain unproven. Vom Rath was known to be homosexual, and one strand of the theory is that he had promised to use his influence to get Grynszpan's position in France regularized. When vom Rath reneged on this promise, Grynszpan went to the Embassy and shot him.
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