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On the morning of November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a desperate seventeen-year-old Polish Jewish refugee, walked into the German embassy in Paris and assassinated Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath in reprisal for the deportation of his family and 12,000 other Jews. Framing the murder as part of an international Jewish conspiracy, the Third Reich exploited the murder to unleash the savage attacks on Jews known collectively now as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). The Nazis made elaborate plans for a lengthy scripted show trial, but this was derailed by Grynszpan's claim that he and vom Rath had been lovers!
Was Grynszpan a crazed lone gunman or agent provocateur of the Gestapo? Was he motivated by a desire to avenge Jewish people, or did his act of violence more to do with an alleged intimate connection between the assassin and his target? Part page-turning historical thriller and part Kafkaesque legal drama, The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan brings to life the historical details and moral dimensions of one of the most enigmatic cases of World War II.
Paperback, 368 Pages, Published 2014
Author: Jonathan Kirsch