‘Israel’s’ Kristallnacht
BY BRUCE NEUBURGER
Interior view of the destroyed Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, Berlin, burned on Kristallnacht. Photograph Source: Center for Jewish History, NYC – Public Domain.
Germany, November 1938
On November 7, 1938, a 17-year-old German Jewish student walked into the German consulate in Paris and asked to speak to the German consular. When he was told he was unavailable the young man, Herschel Grynspan agreed to speak to a lower-level official, Ernst Vom Rath. When the official appeared Grynspan pulled a pistol and shot him in the abdomen. Vom Rath died of his injury two days later.
Word of Vom Rath’s death reached Germany at a moment when the Nazi Party leadership was in Munich celebrating the anniversary of the 1923 Beerhall Putsch. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi min...