Editing Kristallnacht (section)

===Shooting of vom Rath===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1988-078-07, Herschel Feibel Grynszpan.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Herschel Grynszpan]], 7 November 1938]]
[[File:Ernst-vom-Rath.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Ernst vom Rath]] ]]
Among those expelled was the family of Sendel and Riva Grynszpan, Polish Jews who had emigrated to Germany in 1911 and settled in [[Hanover]], Germany. At the trial of [[Adolf Eichmann]] in 1961, Sendel Grynszpan recounted the events of their deportation from Hanover on the night of 27 October 1938: "Then they took us in police trucks, in prisoners' lorries, about 20 men in each truck, and they took us to the railway station. The streets were full of people shouting: ''{{'}}Juden Raus! Auf Nach Palästina!{{'}}''" ("Jews get out! Go to Palestine!").<ref>Hannah Arendt, ''Eichmann in Jerusalem'', p. 228.</ref> Their seventeen-year-old son [[Herschel Grynszpan|Herschel]] was living in Paris with an uncle.<ref name="Hutchinson 1998"/> Herschel received a postcard from his family from the Polish border, describing the family's expulsion: "No one told us what was up, but we realized this was going to be the end{{nbsp}}.... We don't have a penny. Could you send us something?"<ref name="GSA">German State Archives, [[Potsdam]], quoted in Rita Thalmann and Emmanuel Feinermann, ''Crystal night, 9–10 November 1938'', pp. 33, 42.</ref> He received the postcard on 3 November 1938.

On the morning of Monday, 7 November 1938, he purchased a revolver and a box of bullets, then went to the German embassy and asked to see an embassy official. After he was taken to the office of Nazi diplomat [[Ernst vom Rath]], Grynszpan fired five bullets at Vom Rath, two of which hit him in the abdomen. Vom Rath was a professional diplomat with the Foreign Office who expressed anti-Nazi sympathies, largely based on the Nazis' treatment of the Jews and was under Gestapo investigation for being politically unreliable.<ref>William L. Shirer, ''The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich'', p. 430.</ref> However, he also argued that the anti-Semitic laws were "necessary" to allow the ''[[Volksgemeinschaft]]'' to flourish.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Schwab |first=Gerald |title=The Day the Holocaust Began |publisher=Praeger |year=1990 |location=New York |pages=15}}</ref>

Grynszpan made no attempt to escape the French police and freely confessed to the shooting. In his pocket, he carried a postcard to his parents with the message, "May God forgive me{{nbsp}}... I must protest so that the whole world hears my protest, and that I will do." It is widely assumed that the assassination was politically motivated, but historian [[Hans-Jürgen Döscher]] says the shooting may have been the result of a love affair gone wrong, and that Grynszpan and vom Rath had become intimate after they met in [[Le Boeuf sur le Toit (cabaret)|Le Boeuf sur le Toit]], which was a popular meeting place for gay and bisexual men at the time.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/31/humanities.research |title=Did gay affair provide a catalyst for Kristallnacht? |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130825201655/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/31/humanities.research |archive-date=25 August 2013 |first=Kate |last=Connolly |work=The Guardian |date=30 October 2001 |quote=On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a Jew, walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat. Nazi propagandists condemned the shooting as a terrorist attack to further the cause of the Jewish 'world revolution' and launched the series of attacks known as ''Kristallnacht''. Vom Rath and Grynszpan met in Le Boeuf sur le Toit bar, a popular haunt for gay men in the autumn of 1938 and became intimate. }}</ref>

The next day, the German government retaliated, barring Jewish children from German state elementary schools, indefinitely suspending Jewish cultural activities, and putting a halt to the publication of Jewish newspapers and magazines, including the three national German Jewish newspapers. A newspaper in Britain described the last move, which cut off the Jewish populace from their leaders, as "intended to disrupt the Jewish community and rob it of the last frail ties which hold it together."<ref name=Gilbert23/> Their rights as citizens had been stripped.<ref>"Nazis Planning Revenge on Jews", ''News Chronicle'', 9 November 1938</ref> One of the first legal measures issued was an order by Heinrich Himmler, commander of all German police, forbidding Jews to possess any weapons whatsoever and imposing a penalty of twenty years' confinement in a concentration camp upon every Jew found in possession of a weapon hereafter.<ref name="NYT1938">"Nazis Smash, Loot and Burn Jewish Shops and Temples Until Goebbels Calls Halt", ''New York Times'', 11 November 1938</ref>