Book offers fresh look at Kristallnacht
As Germany prepares to mark 75th anniversary of Night of Broken Glass, new account sheds light on murder of diplomat Ernst vom Rath, whose November 7, 1938 death Nazi leaders seized upon as pretext for pogrom against Jews
The attacks of November 9 and 10, 1938, saw Nazi thugs plunder Jewish businesses throughout Germany, torch synagogues and round up about 30,000 Jewish men for deportation to concentration camps.
Some 90 Jews were killed in the orgy of violence also known as "The Night of Broken Glass."
In a country keenly aware of its past, public speeches, service projects, art installations and religious gatherings are scheduled to commemorate the events.
At the same time, a new account is shedding light on the murder of diplomat Ernst vom Rath, whose November 7, 1938 death Nazi leaders seized upon as pretext for the pogrom.
Fuming over Germany's treatment of Jews, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jewish youth, shot vom Rath in the German Embassy in Paris.
History has long regarded Grynszpan as a murderer, but a new book suggests the shots he fired may not have been fatal.
"I'm 90% certain that Herschel Grynszpan didn't murder Ernst vom Rath. Hitler let him die," Berlin investigative journalist Armin Fuhrer told AFP.
In his book, "Herschel - Das Attentat des Herschel Grynszpan am 7. November 1938 und der Beginn des Holocaust" (Herschel – The Assassination by Herschel Grynszpan on the 7th of November 1938 and the Beginning of the Holocaust), Fuhrer argues the envoy could have survived gunshot wounds to his shoulder and stomach if Nazi leaders had not decided to make a martyr of him.
"Hitler sent his personal doctor, Karl Brandt, to Paris... so he would consciously let Ernst vom Rath die, and not give him the medical help he needed," Fuhrer said.
Fuhrer's book reveals vom Rath had acute gastrointestinal tuberculosis at the time of his death, a detail Nazi officials didn't make public so as not to weaken the "causal connection" between Grynszpan's shooting and the official's death, Fuhrer wrote.
Grynszpan's parents had sneaked him out of Germany to France when he was 15.
'Exactly the excuse Hitler eagerly waited for'
The month before the shootings, his parents and siblings in Germany were rounded up with as many as 17,000 others, deported and forced to live in a no-man's land on the Polish-German border as Nazis tried to 'repatriate' Jews with Polish roots.
Learning of his family's plight via a postcard from his sister, Grynszpan let loose five shots in the German embassy, providing "exactly the excuse Hitler and Goebbels had long and eagerly waited for," to foment anti-Jewish violence, Fuhrer wrote.
The last official record of Grynszpan places him in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin in 1942.
Fuhrer said much of the previous scholarship on the events leading up to Kristallnacht had relied too heavily on Nazi accounts.
He based his work on documents in public archives, some of which have only recently been made available to researchers.
In Germany and Austria, preparations are under way to solemnly commemorate the violence of Kristallnacht, which Chancellor Angela Merkel last week called "one of the darkest moments in German history."
On Friday in Berlin, German President Joachim Gauck will visit a former workshop and sanctuary for blind and deaf Jews during WWII, now a museum.
About 100 shop owners in the German capital are expected to hang adhesives on their windows to create the illusion of broken glass, and Berliners are being called upon to clean "Stolpersteine" memorials for Jews in their neighborhoods.
The "stumbling blocks" are small plaques bearing the names of Holocaust victims embedded in the street in front of their last known address.
Starting Sunday, the Conference of European Rabbis will host a gathering in Berlin to commemorate the pogrom.
In Austria, President Heinz Fischer will give a speech Sunday during ceremonies organized by the Austrian Jewish Community, and in the city of Innsbruck, the local Social Democratic Party plans to hold an "anti-fascist walk" to sites of the pogrom.
