A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris

On the morning of November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, walked into the German embassy in Paris and assassinated Ernst vom Rath, a low-level Nazi diplomat. Two days later, the Third Reich exploited the murder to inaugurate its long-planned campaign of terror against Germany’s Jewish citizens—what became known as Kristallnacht. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of Kristallnacht, Kirsch— lawyer and bestselling author—unpacks the moral dimensions of one of the most enigmatic cases of World War II.