Ernst vom Rath

Ernst Eduard vom Rath (born June 3, 1909 in Frankfurt am Main, † November 9, 1938 in Paris) was a German diplomat and embassy secretary in Paris. The assassination attempt by Herschel Grynszpan on November 7, 1938, was a pretext for the November pogroms known as "Kristallnacht".

Vom Rath attended the secondary school in Breslau. He completed his law studies in Bonn, Munich and Königsberg. In 1928 he became a member of the Corps Palatia Bonn. He joined the NSDAP on July 14, 1932, and the SA in April 1933. From 1934 he took the post of legation attaché in the Foreign Office, in 1935/36 he completed his preparatory service in Paris as his uncle's personal secretary, which then ended with Ambassador Roland Köster who died in 1935. On June 24, 1936, he passed the diplomatic-consular examination and was employed at the Consulate General in Calcutta. There he fell ill in December 1937, according to his own information, from severe amoebic dysentery and had to leave India in March 1938 as a result. After his return to Germany for several months of treatment in St. Blasien because of an "intestinal problem", he was transferred to the embassy in Paris on July 13, 1938, where he was appointed secretary of the legation on October 18, 1938. According to affidavits from the attending physicians, vom Rath suffered from homosexually transmitted gonorrhoeic rectal inflammation. He chose Jewish doctors in Berlin to treat the disease, presumably to reduce the likelihood of reporting or denunciation.

As part of the Poland Action, around 17,000 Jews living in Germany with Polish citizenship were deported to Poland at the end of October 1938. Some of them had to stay in the no man's land between Germany and Poland because Poland refused to allow them to re-enter. Herschel Grynszpan's parents and his sister Berta, who had lived in Hanover for decades, were also completely destitute in a camp in Zbąszyń, Poland. After hearing about his family's situation, Herschel Grynszpan gained access to the Palais Beauharnais, the seat of the German embassy, ​​on November 7th by pretending to "speak to a secretary of the legation to hand in an important document". Grynszpan fired a total of five shots at vom Rath, who was hit first in the shoulder. Another bullet struck the spleen. He was operated on in a hospital. On the same day, Adolf Hitler sent his attending physician Karl Brandt and Georg Magnus from Münster to Paris to support the French doctors. Vom Rath succumbed to his injuries on November 9th at 5:30 p.m. Immediately before his death, vom Rath was personally appointed Legation Councilor 1st Class by the Führer.

After the funeral ceremony organized by Ernst von Weizsäcker in Paris and the transfer of the coffin in a special train via Aachen and Cologne, the state funeral for vom Rath took place on November 17, 1938 in the north cemetery in Düsseldorf in the presence of the Führer. Vom Rath was considered a martyr and martyr in the struggle against world Jewry, so called by the National Socialists, against the Third Reich, and there was talk of Fememord, which the "Elders of Zion" had commissioned. Accordingly, at the end of 1941, the Ministry of Propaganda, Foreign Affairs and Justice came up with a plan to open trial against Grynszpan to prove that the act was part of a comprehensive plan by international Jewry to drive the world into war with Germany.

In the indictment of the Oberreichsanwalts dated October 16, 1941, the following note can be found under the "Admission of the accused":

"In the course of further investigations, he even went so far as to make the cheeky, lying claim that he had already got to know the Counselor vom Rath a long time before and that he had been homosexually abused by him several times."

In addition, Grynszpan alleged at times that he had worked as a pimp for vom Rath, had been cheated out of the commission by him and had homosexual relations with the diplomat - he later withdrew this allegation, but only in the form of a ciphered note.

As early as 1941, the Ministry of Justice and the Reich Security Main Office knew from various sources that vom Rath was apparently actually active in the homosexual scene in Paris and had also met Grynszpan there, which is why there were increasing internal reservations about the opening of the trial. For example, around the writer André Gide, the homosexual relationships between vom Rath and Grynszpan were rumored as early as the end of 1938. In addition, on June 6, 1941, vom Rath's brother was convicted of "fornication with men".

It cannot be ruled out that vom Rath and Grynszpan actually knew each other and that the murder of vom Rath was blackmailed - e. B. about money or travel documents - could have preceded, which also suggests information from Grynszpan's parents.

Dr. Goebbels had planned a show trial against the murderer in order to expose Grynszpan as a stooge of the "international Jewish world conspiracy". A parallel to the assassination attempt in Sarajevo in 1914 was also to be constructed. However, the overzealous public prosecutor made what Goebbels saw, a fatal mistake, of adding the charge of homosexuality to the indictment. According to Goebbels, this was based only on an anonymous letter "[...] from some Jewish emigrant who leaves open the likelihood of homosexual intercourse between Grünspan and vom Rath"; he rejected the claim as "absurd, typically Jewish claim". Nevertheless, the “de-politicization of the act” and the reference to the homosexual milieu meant that the process was postponed and ultimately never materialized. According to official records of the envoy Ewald Krümmer, Dr. Goebbels withdrew from the trial on April 16, 1942 for these reasons.