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Ernst vom Rath

 
Ernst Vom Rath

 
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Ernst vom Rath
 
 
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Ernst Eduard vom Rath (3 June 1909–9 November 1938) was a German
Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the colloquial English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party , which established a Totalitarianism dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945....
 diplomat. He is most noted for his assassination
Assassination

Assassination is the targeted killing of a public figure. Assassinations may be prompted by ideology, politics, or military reasons. Additionally, assassins may be motivated by contract killing, revenge, or celebrity or may be mental disorder....
 in Paris
Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
 in 1938 by a Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish youth, Herschel Grynszpan
Herschel Grynszpan

File:Herschel_Grynszpan_nov_7_1938.jpg Herschel Feibel Grynszpan , was a Germany political assassin. Grynszpan's November 7, 1938 assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath served as a pretext for the Kristallnacht, the Antisemitism pogrom of November 9?10, 1938....
. The assassination triggered Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht

File:1938 Interior of Berlin synagogue after Kristallnacht.jpgKristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass or "night of shattered crystal" was a pogrom in Nazi Germany on November 9?10, 1938....
, the "Night of Broken Glass".

Early life and career
Vom Rath was born in Frankfurt am Main, the son of a high-ranking public official. He attended a school in Breslau, and then studied law at Bonn
Bonn

Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located about 20 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the Capital of Germany West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
, Munich
Munich

Munich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. Munich is located on the River Isar north of the Northern Limestone Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg....
 and Königsberg
Königsberg

K?nigsberg was after World War II in 1946 renamed Kaliningrad by the Soviet Union.The city was the Capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945....
, until 1932, when he joined the Nazi Party and became a career diplomat.






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Ernst Eduard vom Rath (3 June 1909–9 November 1938) was a German
Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the colloquial English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party , which established a Totalitarianism dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945....
 diplomat. He is most noted for his assassination
Assassination

Assassination is the targeted killing of a public figure. Assassinations may be prompted by ideology, politics, or military reasons. Additionally, assassins may be motivated by contract killing, revenge, or celebrity or may be mental disorder....
 in Paris
Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
 in 1938 by a Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish youth, Herschel Grynszpan
Herschel Grynszpan

File:Herschel_Grynszpan_nov_7_1938.jpg Herschel Feibel Grynszpan , was a Germany political assassin. Grynszpan's November 7, 1938 assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath served as a pretext for the Kristallnacht, the Antisemitism pogrom of November 9?10, 1938....
. The assassination triggered Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht

File:1938 Interior of Berlin synagogue after Kristallnacht.jpgKristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass or "night of shattered crystal" was a pogrom in Nazi Germany on November 9?10, 1938....
, the "Night of Broken Glass".

Early life and career


Vom Rath was born in Frankfurt am Main, the son of a high-ranking public official. He attended a school in Breslau, and then studied law at Bonn
Bonn

Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located about 20 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the Capital of Germany West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
, Munich
Munich

Munich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. Munich is located on the River Isar north of the Northern Limestone Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg....
 and Königsberg
Königsberg

K?nigsberg was after World War II in 1946 renamed Kaliningrad by the Soviet Union.The city was the Capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945....
, until 1932, when he joined the Nazi Party and became a career diplomat. In April 1933 he became a member of the SA
Sturmabteilung

The , abbreviated SA, , functioned as a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party the Germany Nazism. They played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s....
, the party paramilitary
Paramilitary

A paramilitary is a force whose function and organisation are similar to those of a professional military force, but which is not regarded as having the same status....
. In 1935, after a posting in Bucharest
Bucharest

Bucharest is the capital city, industrial and commercial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the D?mbovita River....
, he was posted to the German embassy in Paris.

Assassination


In November 1938, vom Rath was fatally shot by a 17-year-old Jewish youth, Herschel Grynszpan
Herschel Grynszpan

File:Herschel_Grynszpan_nov_7_1938.jpg Herschel Feibel Grynszpan , was a Germany political assassin. Grynszpan's November 7, 1938 assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath served as a pretext for the Kristallnacht, the Antisemitism pogrom of November 9?10, 1938....
, who had fled from Germany to France. The reason Grynszpan chose vom Rath as his victim is not known with certainty, although it is known than he was upset over news that his family was being deported from Germany back to Poland
Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian Enclave and exclave, to the north....
. Most accounts of the shooting state that Grynszpan did not ask for Rath by name but only asked to speak to a member of the diplomatic staff. Rath died of his wounds after two days. The anti-Semitic violence of Kristallnacht was launched immeditately after his death.

Aftermath


After the killing there were claims that vom Rath was a homosexual, and that Grynszpan was intending to use this claim in his defence at the trial by implying that Rath had seduced him. Goebbels had been intending to turn the trial into Nazi propaganda about Jewish conspiracy, but the homosexuality accusations threatened to humiliate the Nazis. Goebbels wrote that "Grynszpan has invented the insolent argument that he had a homosexual relationship with... vom Rath. That is, of course, a shameless lie; however it is thought out very cleverly and would, if brought out in the course of a public trial, certainly become the main argument of enemy propaganda." Whether or not Rath was homosexual is not known. His brother was convicted of homosexual offences and there were allegations that vom Rath was treated for rectal gonorrhoea at the Berlin Institute of Radiology. As a result of the potential embarrassment the trial was indefinitely postponed.

Grynszpan was returned to Germany after the defeat of France in 1940 and is believed to have died in a German prison or concentration camp in 1944 or early 1945.