Showing Herschel: The Boy Who Started World War II by Andy Marino

One bright November morning in 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German Jew hiding in Paris, heard that his family had been expelled from Germany, and finally reached breaking point. The SS had beaten and bullwhipped them across the border into Poland and now they were starving to death. Herschel walked into the German embassy in Paris and gunned down a diplomat. He died - Hitler sent his own doctors to make sure of it - and Kristallnacht was unleashed. The assassination made front page news around the world. The diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, was given a german state funeral - but was he in reality an anti-Nazi agent? had he been Herschel's homosexual lover? Herschel himself disappeared - but was he executed, or did he survive the war to begin a new life with a new identity? This book provides a dramatic account of one of the most remarkable stories of the war.