Ernst vom Rath
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Ernst vom Rath (1909–1938) was the son of a high-ranking diplomat. He studied until 1932, when he joined a fledgeling political party, the NSDAP a.k.a. the Nazi party. Two years later he became a member of the SA, a police force that were rivals to the SS. In 1935 he became an assistant to his uncle Roland Koester. In the following years he worked at the German embassy in Paris. In November 1938 he was shot by a German Jew named Herschel Grynszpan, who fled from Germany to France as Adolf Hitler's deportation to Poland began. When Hitler heard of vom Rath's death he ordered a search for all Jewish men across Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and parts of Poland (Kristallnacht); in all 26,000 Jews were arrested and this started the Holocaust.
