On November 7, seventeen-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, whose family had been ordered deported from Hamburg to Poland with twenty thousand other Jews—when Warsaw threatened to cancel their passports, leaving them stateless in Germany and thus Berlin’s responsibility—walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath. When Rath died two days later, all hell broke loose in the Reich. On the night of November 9–10, Nazi storm troopers went on a rampage, smashing windows, looting Jewish shops, burning synagogues, beating and lynching Jews. Scores perished. Hundreds were
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