Possible Film Narrative: Ernst Vom Rath, believed homosexual

The Mysterious Murder of Ernst vom Rath
by Herschel Grynszpan
– The Nazis’ Smokescreen for Pogrom Night, November 9/10, 1938

Meier Schwarz

Just days before Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues across Germany were devastated in the pogrom of November 1938, Ernst vom Rath, a low-ranking Nazi diplomat, was allegedly gunned down in his Parisian office by Herschel Grynszpan, a young Polish Jew. It was vom Rath’s murder which sparked the “spontaneous” outburst of violence against the Jews, or so the Nazis said. The Nazis’ actions in 1938, however, suggest that they were preparing their most ruthless anti-Jewish operation yet - and vom Rath’s assassination was a convenient catalyst for such a strike. Inconsistencies surrounding the assassination itself raise doubts about Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels’ account of the incident. Nevertheless, his version of events is generally accepted by historians, even today. Could it be that the Nazis had a hand in vom Rath’s death?

The events of November 9/10, 1938, often referred to as the “Night of Broken Glass” or “Crystal Night,” marked a turning point in the Nazis’ policy toward the Jews. The magnitude, brutality and highly organized execution of the pogrom delivered a clear message to Germany’s remaining Jews - they had to get out, and fast. The extraordinary historical importance of that fateful night makes the way in which post-war historians have dealt with it all the more astonishing. For years, no one questioned the Nazis’ statistics on the number of Jews killed, synagogues destroyed and Jewish businesses plundered and looted. Likewise, Goebbels’ account of vom Rath’s death has largely gone unchallenged, despite the Nazis’ deserved reputation for engineering “spontaneous” events as pretexts for their own aggressive actions. (For example, the Reichstag or “German parliament” fire of 1933.) These factors give cause for a closer examination, at the very least, of the events surrounding Pogrom Night.

The Fateful Year of 1938

In 1938, the German Reich finally implemented its policy of stripping Jews of their financial resources and forcing them out of the country. The circumstances of Germany’s Jews were already extremely grave. Between 60 and 70 percent of Jewish businesses had been “aryanized” and unemployment among Jews had doubled within just a few months. Meanwhile, the Nazis’ last potential opponents, the Conservatives, were removed from government in February, leaving Hitler’s men free to settle the “Jewish Question” once and for all. Indeed, throughout the fateful year of 1938, the Nazis introduced, step by step, a series of measures which would make the pogrom in November look like the sudden climax of a catastrophic chain of events.

Hermann Goering, who was commissioner for Hitler’s Four Year (economic) Plan, launched several decrees to impoverish Germany’s Jews. In April, it became a crime for any German to disguise the fact that a business was owned by a Jew. Jewish businesses and stores now had to display an identifying symbol as a “prelude to the fundamental solution of the Jewish question in the economy” (quote taken from the Salzburger Zeitung). In another decree, issued in cooperation with the Interior Ministry, Goering ordered the registration of all Jewish-owned property and assets; allowing the Nazis to find out just how much wealth was in Jewish hands.

The relevant institutions worked with remarkable haste. In August, the Nazi leadership instructed the tax authorities, the Security Police, the Gestapo and the Chamber of Commerce, as well as its advisers in the building sector, to speed up the process. The registration of all Jewish property had to be completed before September 30 at all costs, even if this meant taking on additional staff. At the same time, legal measures to alienate the Jews were reinforced. Jewish citizens were forbidden to work in more and more professions and had to have a large “J” stamped in their passports. They were also forced to adopt easily-recognizable “Jewish” names, and their original ID cards were replaced by cards specifically for Jews.

That year also saw the Nazis develop a more aggressive foreign policy, which met with no meaningful resistance from Germany’s neighbors. The annexation of Austria was greeted more or less with silent acceptance, despite the anti-Jewish operations that began there. Then Britain, France and Italy approvedGermany’s annexation of the Sudetenland at the Munich conference of September 1938. As if all this was not enough, in July, at an international conference in Evian (France), not one country said it was prepared to take in Jewish refugees from Germany. “No one wants them” read the headline of the Nazi newspaper, the Völkische Beobachter. It was true.

Germany’s largest expulsion of Jews up until that point took place at the end of October 1938, when the Polish government said it would cancel the passports of Polish Jews who had been living abroad for more than five years. This would have affected approximately 50,000 people in Germany. The Gestapo was therefore instructed to deport them within 14 days, before they became “stateless” and could no longer be moved. Seventeen thousand Jews were expelled during this operation, before an agreement was reached with Poland. Once again, the international community did not really protest.

The persecution certainly did not end there. Pogroms against Jews had been happening all over the country ever since the 1937 Christmas boycott of Jewish businesses, organized by Julius Streicher, a Nazi politician and owner of the anti-Semitic newspaper, Der Stürmer. One of the biggest pogroms took place in June 1938 in Berlin. Fearing that a favorable resolution of the so-called Sudeten Crisis could be jeopardized by the violence, the police intervened only after several days to prevent the total destruction of Jewish stores and businesses.

Therefore, after several years of covert but effective oppression and displacement of the Jews, in 1938, the Nazis had launched their final push to squeeze Jews out of economic life altogether. The reaction of world opinion ranged from trade embargos against Germany to total apathy. The next course of action was summed up by the Nazis’ “Jewish Council” in Reinhard Heydrich’s Reich Security Office in 1937: the “most effective tool” for speeding up the “solution of the Jewish question” was the “anger of the people […] which manifests itself in riots […] because the Jew has learned a lot from pogroms, and he fears nothing more than a hostile atmosphere, which can spontaneously turn against him.”

Goebbels, Grynszpan and vom Rath - The Key Players

While the historical background to the pogrom tells us much, it is also important to look at those who played a crucial role in the events leading up to that night.

Joseph Goebbels - without doubt, Goebbels was a major force behind Pogrom Night. As minister for propaganda and Hitler’s personal confidant, he held a prominent position in the Third Reich leadership. He was, however, under severe pressure from above. Hitler himself had blamed Goebbels for failing to exploit the propaganda potential of the Sudeten Crisis, not to mention his extra-marital affair with a Czech actress, Lida Baarova. Goebbels had even considered divorcing his wife Magda, but Hitler had forbidden him to do so. Not only did Magda Goebbels have a close relationship with Hitler, she was also seen as the quasi “First Lady” of the German Reich. Baarova was by far not the only woman with whom Goebbels was conducting an affair, another fact for which he was criticized within the party. Therefore in November 1938, he needed to win back Hitler’s good favor, and a decisive strike against the Jews must surely have seemed a good way to go about it.

However, Goebbels’ was opposed by Goering, who was interested in the value of Jewish property, and by Heydrich, head of the SS Security Service. The SS had wanted full control of “Jewish Policy” for sometime, and as such, the behavior of its members was noticeably restrained throughout the pogrom. The organization also voiced heavy criticism of Goebbels when the violence was over. Heydrich himself was in Paris one week before vom Rath’s death, although the reason for and details of his trip are unknown. As leader of the Nazis’ quasi internal secret service, he would have been well informed about the victim of the assassination.

Ernst vom Rath - vom Rath joined the Nazi party in 1932, shortly after finishing his law degree. He began working for the Foreign Office in 1934. In 1935/6, he served as personal secretary to the German ambassador in Paris, who was his uncle. He was then sent to Calcutta but was recalled after one year, suffering from a bowel disorder contracted, according to his Jewish doctor, Dr. Pomeranz, as a result of having homosexual intercourse. (Dr. Pomeranz had conferred with one Dr. Grumpert, a specialist in sexually transmitted diseases. It was Grumpert who had originally sent vom Rath to her.[1]) Vom Rath returned to work in mid-July, this time back to the embassy in Paris. He was promoted to legation secretary in October. Hans-Jürgen Döscher is one historian, among others, who suspects that vom Rath and Grynszpan must had known each other through the homosexual scene before their encounter at the embassy. Grynszpan was known to have visited various public houses mainly frequented by homosexual customers.[2] Furthermore, in 1941, while in prison in Germany, Grynszpan claimed to have known vom Rath for a long time, and to have been sexually abused by him. This was one reason why Goebbels decided not to give Grynszpan a show trial.

Herschel Grynszpan - Grynszpan was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Hanover in 1921. He studied at a Yeshiva in Frankfurt and eventually ended up inParis in 1936, where he resided illegally. His family was among the 17,000 Jews whom the Gestapo deported to Poland in October 1938. Grynszpan received a postcard from his sister on November 3, describing the catastrophic conditions in which the refugees were being forced to live in no-man’s-land between the two countries.

Nazi Preparations and Warnings to Jews

Against this background, any escalation of the Nazis’ action against the Jews, including a pogrom, would have seemed an entirely logical step and would have furthered the personal motives of some of those involved. Certain Jews were even warned that an attack had been planned. Professor Heinrich Hörlein, head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry and a Nazi Party member, reportedly spoke in 1938 of what would happen to the Jews, and the Jewish physicist, Lise Meitner, described his warnings in a letter to her colleague, Otto Hahn, in 1945.[3] Furthermore, in his article, “Die Vorplanung der Kristallnacht” (The Planning of Crystal Night), Dr. K.J. Ball-Kurdi mentions two similar cases in which Jews were warned of the danger. Berthold Löwenstein was a Jewish judge dismissed from his post in 1933. Nevertheless, his former colleague and brother mason, a man named Engelke, had always advised him to remain in Germany. Engelke suddenly changed his mind, however, following a meeting at the Ministry of Finance on October 29, 1938. He said something terrible would happen to the Jews in mid-November, and that Löwenstein must leave before November 5. A former Jewish police chief, Konrad Kaiser, told a similar story. He was informed by an ex-colleague that the SS had enlisted the help of the local and secret police, as well as the tax authorities, to prepare lists of Jews who were to be sent to concentration camps.

Preparations in the camps themselves began in the late summer of 1938. In Dachau, additional mass sleeping areas were added to recently-erected barracks, even though prisoner transports to Buchenwald were leaving the camp rather empty.[4] A former prisoner, Hans Schwarz, who was working in an office inDachau at the time, said he had seen a document that gave instructions to sew a Judenstern or Jewish star onto 5,000 prison uniforms.[5] Meanwhile, the prisoners who remained at Dachau were relocated within the camp. The result was that some barracks were filled to bursting point while others were left empty.

The Assassination

On the morning on November 7, four days after Herschel Grynszpan received his sister’s letter; he entered a gun store called “A la fine lame” and bought a wheel-lock revolver for 245 francs, including bullets. He then went to the German embassy, where at the front door he met the German Ambassador, Graf Welczeck, who was returning from his usual morning walk. According to Welczeck’s testimony, the ambassador directed Grynszpan to his doorman, Mathes. Grynszpan told the doorman that he had important document which he must give to a secretary.[6] Grynszpan was apparently not interested in speaking to the ambassador outside the building (from where, presumably, if he was planning an assassination, he would have had a much better chance of escape). Instead, he asked to speak to a secretary directly. It seems odd that he was allowed in without a passport check or any further questioning, and that the office assistant, Nagorka, announced Grynszpan’s presence to vom Rath without asking the visitor to enter his details on the required form. Vom Rath even invited Grynszpan into his office. All this, just to submit a document?

Shortly afterwards, Nagorka heard cries for help - but no shots.[7] He found vom Rath lying on the floor of the office. His reaction was to leave the injured man where he lay, grab hold of Grynszpan and hand him over to the French policeman on guard outside the embassy. In doing so, Nagorka decided against two more likely courses of action. Firstly, he did not help vom Rath, the victim. Bear in mind that Nagorka had not heard gunshots and therefore could not have known what had happened in the room. Secondly, he did not notify the SS storm troop leader Boemelburg, who was responsible for the ambassador while the latter was outside German territory. It also seems strange that even though the French policeman was alone on duty and must have been quite overwhelmed (arresting a would-be murderer on his own); he did not receive any assistance.

Moreover, Friedrich Kaul, an attorney who later examined the French case files, said the French commissioner, who entered vom Rath’s room shortly after the incident, found a revolver with all five bullets intact (the revolver used in the shooting would have contained at least some empty cartridges).[8] Was the revolver Grynszpan bought that morning the weapon used to commit the crime? Was Grynszpan even the perpetrator?

What we do know for certain is that Grynszpan was arrested and vom Rath was examined by the German ambassador’s trusted doctor, Dr. Claas. Claas was the first medic to treat vom Rath after the incident and afterwards he transferred the patient to the care of Dr. Baumgartner, a French Professor at the l’Almahospital, at number 166, Rue de l’Université. Even though the Nazi leadership had complete trust in Dr. Claas and expressed no doubts about Prof. Baumgartner’s abilities, Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Brandt, accompanied by one Prof. Magnus, flew to Paris on the night of November 7 in Hitler’s private plane. It is not clear why they were sent. Dr. Brandt was a confidant of Hitler, but was not especially accomplished in medical terms; he was actually an orthopedic surgeon. Shortly after they arrived, the two medics sent their first bulletin to Berlin regarding the patient’s condition: “Vom Rath’s […] condition […] should be considered serious. Dr. Baumgartner of Paris has administered the best possible care and treatment up until this point, and this gives us hope that he will make further progress.”[9] Welczeck, the German ambassador, mentioned that vom Rath had “made it through the night relatively well”[10] in his report on the incident, written, apparently, on the afternoon of November 8.  So as things stood, vom Rath was in a serious condition, but there was hope of recovery.

That was until Hitler’s doctors spent half an hour alone with him. In their bulletin to Berlin on the evening of November 8, they expressed deeper concern. “His temperature has remained high. He is showing early signs of weak circulation.”[11] What Brandt and Magnus did to vom Rath while they were alone with him, we can only guess. It is safe to assume, however, that Brandt in particular would have had few scruples. As the Nazis’ most senior doctor, he was condemned to death in the Nuremberg doctor trials of 1948. He had taken part in experiments on concentration camp prisoners, among other crimes.

Vom Rath died the next afternoon, November 9, at 16:30. Before he passed away, his mother visited him at his sick bed, but was strictly forbidden to speak to him. Why? For the sake of his health, or for fear that he might give something away? Vom Rath’s father, who also worked in the diplomatic service, expressed doubts that his son really had been the victim of an assassination. He told his Jewish neighbor, a cantor called Magnus Davidson, that he sooner believed in a “creature hired by the Nazis than in a Jewish assassin,” and said that his son had known too much.[12] The Nazis may indeed not have had much sympathy for vom Rath. After all, he not was not particularly high in party rank, he was an aristocrat, and probably homosexual. He may even have been a thorn in their side. A Berlin journalist, Dr. Heinrich Muehsam, when asked at the time if vom Rath would die, answered, “Of course he will die. If not, the whole thing is worthless. […] The greater the mourning, the more fanatical the hatred will be.”[13]

The Aftermath

The way in which this “fanatical hatred” was unleashed on the night of November 9/10, 1938, has been documented many times. At least 1,500 synagogues were attacked. Some were set on fire, while others were partially destroyed or even demolished. Around 7,500 Jewish businesses were wrecked and plundered and at least 600 people were murdered either during the pogrom or in concentration camps during the days and weeks that followed. Some took their own lives in despair.

The Nazi leadership was ready with its response just one day after the riots subsided. Goering convened a conference of all the governmental institutions concerned with the “Jewish question,” and a new “Decree for the Exclusion of Jews from German Economic Life” was issued. Such a decree could not have been drawn up overnight; in fact, it would have required lengthily preparations. It seems likely, therefore, that it was prepared before November 9; perhaps even before November 7. Furthermore, institutions such as the Reich Chamber of Culture reacted very quickly to the new guidelines, which gave instructions to avoid “wild actions” against the Jews and instead manipulate the legal system as a tool for persecution. On November 12, Jews were forbidden to enter theaters, cinemas, concerts and exhibitions, and a flood of anti-Jewish laws were enacted in the following days, weeks and months.

Goebbels took part in Goering’s conference, but was visibly shaken. He was held responsible for the extensive damage to property inflicted during Pogrom Night and, once again, criticized for his extra-marital affairs.

It was clear that no one was interested in the actual victims of the pogrom.

Original German text summarized and edited by Daniel Poensgen

Translated into English and condensed by B. Clarke

Many thanks to Dr. Vincent C. Frank, whose research helped greatly with the writing of this article.

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[1] Vgl. Döscher, Hans-Jürgen: "'Reichskristallnacht'. Die November-Pogrome 1938.", Frankfurt (M), Berlin: 198, p.61

[2] Vgl. Döscher (1988), p. 65

[3] Fritz Krafft, "Im Schatten der Sensation, Leben und Wirken von Fritz Strassmann" Verlag Chemie Weinheim 1981, p. 181, quoted at http://www.falsifikation.ch/grynszpan/i_falsifikation.html

[4] Distel, Barbara: "Der Anfang vom Ende" in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, No. 258, November 9, 1978

[5] Schwarz, Hans: : “Wir haben es nicht gewusst. Erlebnisse, Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse aus dem KZ Dachau.“, Dachauer Archiv 21.523, quoted at http://www.falsifikation.ch/grynszpan/i_falsifikation.html [5]

[6] Report from Ambassador Graf Welczeck, taken on the 11.8.1938, quoted in Döscher (1988), p. 70

[7] “Anklageschrift des Oberreichsanwalts gegen Herschel Grünszpan, Okt. 1941”, quoted at http://www.falsifikation.ch/grynszpan/i_falsifikation.html

[8] Kaul, Friedrich: “Der Fall Herschel Grynszpan”, Berlin 1965, p. 8

[9] Quoted in: Döscher, Hans-Jürgen: "Reichskristallnacht. Die Novemberpogrome 1938.", Frankfurt/ Main, Berlin, 1988, p. 64

[10] Report of the German Ambassador Graf Welczeck, from November 8, 1938 on the attack on Legation Secretary vom Rath, quoted in: Döscher, Jürgen (Hrsg.): "Reichskristallnacht. Die Novemberpogrome 1938 im Spiegel ausgewählter Quellen.", Bonn 1988

[11] ebd., p. 64

[12] Benz, Wolfgang (Hrsg.): “Die Juden in Deutschland 1933-1945“, München 1989, p. 505

[13] ebd., p. 508