The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz: A True Story of Family and Survival

by Jeremy Dronfield

As November began, anti-Semitic feelings all across the Reich were looking for an outlet. The trigger was pulled far away in Paris, when a Polish Jew called Herschel Grynszpan, in a blaze of rage over the expulsion of his people from Germany—including his own family—took a new-bought revolver into the German Embassy and fired five bullets into Ernst vom Rath, an official chosen at random. In Vienna the newspapers called the assassination an “outrageous provocation.”39 The Jews must be taught a lesson. Vom Rath died on Wednesday, November 9. That night, the Nazis came out in force on the streets of Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Vienna, and every other town and city. Local party officials and the Gestapo were the masters of ceremonies, and under their lead came the SA and the SS, armed with sledgehammers, axes, and combustibles. The targets were homes and businesses still in Jewish hands. Jews were beaten and murdered out of hand if they got in the way. The storm troopers tore down and burned wherever they could, but it was the shattering of glass that onlookers remembered most vividly; the Germans called it Kristallnacht, night of crystal glass,40 for the glittering shards that carpeted the pavements. The Jews would remember it as the November Pogrom.