New light on Kristallnacht
Startling evidence has emerged that sheds new light on a dark episode in 20th century European history. Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) was a pogrom of German Jews on 9 and 10 November 1938 and a precursor of the Holocaust. Hundreds of Jews were murdered, thousands beaten, and tens of thousands arrested and sent to concentration camps. Meanwhile mobs trashed and looted Jewish-owned stores and burned and destroyed at least 267 synagogues. The excuse used by the Nazis to launch the attacks was the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris, by a 17-year-old Jew, Herschel Grynszpan.
Taken to Germany after the Nazi conquest of France in June 1940, Grynszpan’s fate has always been
