Hitler's Pawn The Boy Assassin and the Holocaust

A remarkable story of a forgotten seventeen–year–old Jew who was blamed by the Nazis for the anti–Semitic violence and terror known as the Kristallnacht, the pogrom still seen as an initiating event of the Holocaust

After learning about Nazi persecution of his family, Herschel Grynszpan (pronounced Greenspan) bought a small handgun and on November 7, 1938, went to the German embassy and shot the first German diplomat he saw. When the man died two days later, Hitler and Goebbels made the shooting their pretext for the state–sponsored wave of antiSemitic terror known as Kristallnacht, still seen by many as an initiating event of the Holocaust.

Overnight, Grynszpan, a bright but naive teenager, was front–page news and a pawn in a global power struggle.

Stephen Koch, the former head of the Writing Division of Columbia University's School of the Arts, is the author of numerous books including Double Lives and The Modern Library Writer's Workshop. He lives in New York City.