Mission to Paris by Alan Furst

Author:Alan Furst
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780297863946
Publisher: W&N

ESPIONAGE

IN GERMANY, IN AUGUST OF 1938, A JEWISH ÉMIGRÉ COUPLE CALLED Grynszpan was informed by the authorities that their residence permits had been cancelled and they would have to reapply for permission to remain in the country. They knew they needn’t bother; the Nazi government wanted to get rid of them, two among seventeen thousand Jews of Polish origin, all of whom would have to return to Poland. In March of that year, however, Poland had annulled the citizenship of almost all resident alien Jews in Germany and Austria. So the Grynszpans couldn’t stay where they were, but had nowhere else to go. On 26 October, the Gestapo resolved this paradox by arresting twelve thousand Jews, taking whatever they owned, putting them in boxcars, then herding them across the border to the Polish town of Zbaszyn, where the Poles refused to admit them.

Stranded in a field outside Zbaszyn, the Jews were without shelter and had very little to eat. So the Grynszpans, desperate for help of any kind, sent a postcard to their son, Herschel, who had fled Germany in 1936, at the age of fifteen, and was living illegally in Paris. On 31 October, Herschel Grynszpan received the postcard but there was nothing to be done, not by him, not by anyone he knew. Unable to help the people he loved, he was caught up in that particularly volatile mix of sorrow and anger and, by 7 November, he could bear it no longer. With the last of his money, he bought a revolver and ammunition, took the Métro to the Solférino station, walked to the German embassy on the rue de Lille and told the reception clerk he wished to speak with an official. The clerk told him he would be seen by a junior diplomat called Ernst vom Rath and sent him upstairs. When Grynszpan entered the office, he raised the revolver and shot vom Rath five times. Grynszpan, a farewell postcard to his parents in his pocket, made no attempt to run away, and was arrested by the French police. Vom Rath was taken to the hospital, where he died on 9 November.

The Nazi leadership was enraged – the more so for being shocked. How could such a thing happen? A Jew, a member of a weak and degenerate race, had had the audacity to attack a German? Imagine! Jews didn’t fight back, they were expected to be meek, and to suffer in silence. So Herschel Grynszpan’s action was seen as a racial insult, an intolerable insult, for which the Jews must be punished. How? Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels met with Chancellor Hitler, and they determined that the German people would avenge the insult with attacks on the Jewish population – in Berlin, and throughout Germany. Thus, on the night of 9 November, at 11.55 p.m., an order was issued by the Gestapo:

BERLIN NO. 234404 9 NOVEMBER, 1938

To all Gestapo Stations and Gestapo District Stations

To Officer or Deputy

This teleprinter message is to be submitted without delay:

1.

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