Grynszpan was arrested

Famous lawyer ( Moro Giafferi ) mysteriously appears

Grynszpan survives the war and lives in Paris supported by LICRA

Bernard Lecache - LICRA founder
	Grynszpan family recieved a vast sum and papers to Palestine from LICRA

What Really Happened During the Crystal Night

On 8 November 1938, one day before the Crystal Night, strange persons who had never been seen there before suddenly appeared in several small towns in Hessen near the French-German border. They went to mayors, Kreisleiters (district Party leaders) and other important officials in these towns and asked them what actions were being planned against the Jews. The officials were rather startled by these questions and replied that they didn't know of any such plans. The strangers acted as if they were shocked to hear this. They shouted and complained that something had to be done against the Jews and then, without further explanation, they disappeared.

They usually regarded the strangers as crazy anti-Semites and promptly forgot about the incidents - until the next evening. Some of these apparently crazy individuals really outdid themselves.

Provocateurs dress as SS

In one case two men, dressed as members of the SS, went to an SA Standartenfuehrer (Colonel) and ordered him to destroy the nearby synagogue. To understand the absurdity of this one must know that the SS and SA were completely separate organizations. A real SS member would never have tried to give orders to an SA unit. This case shows that the strangers were foreigners who did not even understand the distinctions of German authority. The SA Standartenfuehrer rejected the demands of the self-styled SS men and reported the incident to his superiors.

When the provocateurs realized that their efforts were not working with local officials, they changed their tactics. Instead they tried to incite directly the people in the streets. In another town, for example, two men appeared at the market place and began making speeches to the people there, trying to incite them against the Jews. Eventually some people did indeed storm the synagogue, but by then the two provocateurs had, of course, disappeared. Similar incidents occurred in several towns.

Unidentified strangers suddenly appeared, gave speeches, started throwing stones at windows, stormed Jewish buildings, schools, hospitals, and synagogues, and then disappeared.

These unusual incidents had already started on the 8th of November, that is, before Ernst vom Rath was dead. His death was only reported late on the evening of the 9th. The fact that this strange pattern of incidents had already begun one day earlier proves that the death of vom Rath was not the reason for the Crystal Night outburst. Vom Rath was still alive when the pogrom began.

These were methodical thugs and not enraged citizens

Well organized and widespread incidents began on the evening of 9 November. Groups of generally five or six young men, armed with bars and clubs, went down the streets smashing store windows. They were not Jew-hating SA men, enraged over the murder of a German diplomat. They operated too methodically to have been motivated by anger. They carried out their work without any apparent emotion. Nonetheless, it was their destruction

that encouraged certain other individuals from the lowest social classes to become a mob and continue the destruction.

Jews fought off attacks

Police on side of Jews	SA officers stood watch preventing attacks Police and Party officials were generally on the side of the Jews. Some Jewish community leaders went to police stations the next morning and asked the police to investigate the damage done to their synagogues. The resulting police reports are still available in the files today.

Jews weren't  phased by attacks

Also contrary to what we have been told, most Jews were not directly affected by these events. In Berlin, for example, all of the teachers and pupils of the city's largest Jewish school, which served the entire Berlin area, appeared in their classes the next morning without having noticed anything unusual during the previous night. Heinemann Stern, the Jewish principal of that school, wrote in his postwar memoirs that he noticed a burning synagogue on his way to the school on the morning after the Crystal Night, but he thought it was just an accidental fire.

Historians wrote: "Every single Jew was beaten, chased, robbed, insulted and humiliated. The SA tore the Jews from their beds, mercilessly beat them in their apartments and then ... chased them almost to death ... Blood flowed everywhere."

[9] Is it conceivable that thousands of Jewish children would be have been sent to school by their parents on the morning after that fateful night if the attacks against Jews had been so horrific or extensive? Would any parents have let their children go to school if they had thought there was even the slightest danger of them being attacked by roving gangs of SA men? I think the answer is clearly no!

Apparently to avoid internal wrangling and the harm that this would do to their public image, an investigation to determine the instigators never took place. Hitler believed that Dr. Goebbels, his closest confidant and the one man he could never abandon, had been the instigator.

The only persons actually punished were individual SA men who had participated directly in the pogrom and been accused in German courts of murder, assault, looting or other criminal acts by Jewish or German witnesses to these crimes. But before any of these cases ever actually came to trail, Hitler issued a special decree ordering the postponement of all such cases until after the accused individuals were first prosecuted by the Supreme Party Court, an internal court concerned with discipline within the National Socialist Party organization.

Mystery phone calls to local town officials

Several district and local Party leaders (Kreisleiters and Ortsgruppenleiters) were awakened from their sleep in the middle of the night by telephone calls. Someone claiming to be from the regional Party headquarters or the regional Party propaganda bureau (Gauleitung or Gaupropagandaleitung) would ask what was happening in the official's town or city. If the Party official answered "Nothing, everything is quiet," the telephone caller would then say in German slang that he had received an order to the effect that the Jews were going to get it tonight and that the respective official should carry out the order.

In most cases the Party leader, disturbed from his sleep, did not even understand what had happened. Some simply dismissed the call as a joke and went back to bed.

Others called back the office from where the telephone voice had pretended to be calling. If they managed to reach someone in charge, they were often told that nobody knew anything about such a call. But if they reached only a lower official they were often told: "Well, if you got that order, you'd better go ahead and do what you were told." These telephone calls caused considerable confusion. All this came out months later during the trials conducted by the Supreme Party Court. The Chief Judge concluded that in every case a misunderstanding had arisen in one link or other of the chain of command. But when they were confronted with apparently genuine orders to organize demonstrations against the Jews that night, most of the Party leaders had simply not known what to do.

Obviously a group of centrally organized thugs

Munich on the Ninth of November

While all this was happening across the Reich, a special annual commemoration was being held in Munich. Fifteen years earlier, on 9 November 1923, a movement led by Adolph Hitler, Erich von Ludendorff (a leading First World War General), and two major figures in the Bavarian government tried to depose the legal government and take responsibility themselves as a new national government.

Feldherrnhalle
	The uprising or putsch was put down and 16 rebels were shot down next to the Feldherrnhalle, a famous old monument building in central Munich. Accordingly, the 9th of November had been commemorated every year since 1933 as the memorial day for the martyred heroes of the National Socialist movement. Adolph Hitler and the Party veterans, as well as all of the Gauleiters (regional Party leaders) met every year in Munich for the occasion. Hitler would usually deliver a speech to a select audience of Party veterans at the famous Buergerbraeukeller restaurant on the evening of the 8th.
Hitler and veterans reenact On the morning of the 9th Hitler and his veteran comrades would reenact the 1923 "March to the Feldherrnhalle."

SS ceremony On the evening of the 9th the Fuehrer always held an informal dinner at the Old Town Hall ("Alte Rathaus") with old comrades as well as all the Gauleiters. At midnight young men who were about to enter the SS and the SA were sworn in at the Feldherrnhalle. All of the Gauleiters and other guests participated in this very solemn ceremony. After it was over they left Munich and returned to their homes throughout the Reich.

Gaulieters not at posts It is clear that the 9th of November date was chosen very cleverly. The annual commemoration ceremony of that day insured that almost all of the Gauleiters would be away from their home offices when the anti-Jewish demonstrations began. In other words, the actual decision-making responsibilities that were normally carried out by the Gauleiters were temporarily in the hands of lower-ranking individuals with less experience.

Between 8 and 10 November, subordinate officials stood in for the Gauleiters who were either in Munich or en route to or from the annual commemoration there. This temporary transfer of decision-making authority is very important because it contributed to much of the subsequent confusion and thus helped the provocateurs. Another contributing factor was the fact that no one expected any trouble. At that time Germany was one of the most peaceful countries in the world.

There was no reason to expect any kind of unrest. It was only during dinner at the Old Town Hall that the first sporadic reports of riot and destruction reached Munich from some of the Gauleiter's home offices. At the same time it was learned that Ernst vom Rath had died in Paris from his wounds.

You may have heard the widespread allegation that Goebbels started the Crystal Night pogrom with a fiery speech on that evening of 9 November. This widely accepted story is false. The following facts will clarify this point:

As Gauleiter for Berlin, Dr. Goebbels had no authority outside of his Berlin district. Although he was also the Propaganda Minister of the German government, this did not give him any authority over Party officials. Furthermore, he had no authority whatsoever over the SA or the SS.

While the Gauleiters were calling their home offices, the head of the SA, Viktor Lutze, ordered all of his immediate subordinates, the SA Gruppenfuehrers, who were together with him in Munich, to call their home offices as well. Lutze ordered that under no circumstances could SA men take part in any demonstrations against Jews, and that furthermore the SA was to intervene to stop any demonstrations already in progress.

SA, Viktor Lutze gives orders to protect Jews As a result of these strict orders, SA men began to guard Jewish stores that very night wherever windows had been broken. There is no doubt about this order by Lutze because we have the postwar court testimony of several witnesses confirming it. The SS and the police were given similar orders to restore peace and order.

Heydrich orders SS to protect Jews

Himmler ordered Reinhard Heydrich to prevent all destruction of property and to protect Jews against demonstrators. The telex communication of this order still exists. It is in the files of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. However, during the Nuremberg trial this telex order was presented in three different forms, with forged amendments to change the original meaning. In my book Feuerzeichen I undertook to restore the original text.

Provocateurs sent messages to SA Brigade

The trials, held between 1946 and 1952, were based to a large extent on the report of SA Brigade 50 chief Karl Lucke and begins with these words: "On 10 November 1938, at 3 o'clock in the morning, I received the following order: 'By order of the Gruppenfuehrer, all Jewish synagogues within the Brigade district are to be immediately blown up or set on fire'." Lucke then included in his report a listing of synagogues which had been destroyed by members of his Brigade.

This report has been cited by the prosecution at the Nuremberg Tribunal and by practically all of the consensus historians ever since as proof that the SA was given orders to destroy Jewish stores and synagogues.

Lutze ordered the Group leaders to contact their home offices to stop all anti-Jewish demonstrations, Fust, along with the other SA leaders, did just that. He called his office in Mannheim and passed on the orders he had received from Lutze. The man who was on duty that night at the Mannheim SA office telephone and who received Fust's order confirmed that he understood it and then hung up. But he never passed on the order he had received. Instead, he transmitted precisely the opposite order.

Fritsch gets bogus orders

The normal procedure would have been for the man on duty at the telephone to immediately call the deputy group leader, Lucke, who was in nearby Darmstadt. But instead he called SA Oberfuehrer (senior colonel) Fritsch and asked him to come to the office. Fritsch had a reputation for not being particularly clever. When he arrived, the man who had received the telephone call showed him a small paper slip with a few notes on it which said that the synagogues within the Mannheim SA Group district were to be destroyed.

Mysterious telephone call

German government and Party officials were furious about what had happened. Hermann Goering, who was responsible for Germany's economy, complained that it would be impossible to replace the special plate glass of the broken store windows because it was not manufactured in Germany. It had to be imported from Belgium and would cost a great deal of precious foreign currency.

Reason for fine

Because of the Jewish boycott against German goods, the Reich was short of foreign exchange currency. Goering therefore decided that because this shortage was caused by the Jews, it was they who would have to pay for the broken glass. He imposed a fine of one billion Reichsmarks on the German Jews. It was certainly unjust to force Jews to pay for damage which they had not caused. Goering understood this. However, in private he justified the fine by citing the fact that the 1933 Jewish declaration of war against Germany was proclaimed in the name of the millions of Jews throughout the world.

Therefore they could now help their co-religionists in Germany bear the consequences of the boycott. It should also be pointed out that only German Jews with assets of more than 5,000 Reichsmarks in cash had to contribute to the fine. In 1938, when prices were very low, 5,000 Reichsmarks was a small fortune.

The Reich confiscated all insurance payments that were to have been paid to Jews whose businesses and homes were looted or destroyed and the Jewish owners were made personally responsible for the cost of all repairs.