CHAPTER 2 EUROPE AND STATELESSNESS Und ich mußte immer an das Wort denken, das mir vor Jahren ein exilierter Russe gesagt: “Früher hatte der Mensch nur einen Körper und eine Seele. Heute braucht er noch einen Paß dazu, sonst wird er nicht wie ein Mensch behandelt”. – Stefan Zweig, from Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers265 ~ Monday 7 November 1938. Herschel Grynszpan shoots Ernst vom Rath, a diplomat at the German embassy in Paris. Vom Rath dies shortly after, which purportedly provided the National Socialists with an immediate reason for ‘retaliation’: the Reichskristallnacht on 9–10 November 1938.266 Herschel Grynszpan was the son of Sendel and Riva Grynszpan. They were Polish Jews who had been working and living in Germany. Herschel had moved to France in 1936, fleeing Nazi persecution. His family remained in Germany. At the end of October 1938, they and 12.000–17.000 Polish Jews were taken from their homes and brought to the Polish border by train.267 The situation at the border between Neu-Bentschen (Germany)268 and Zbaszyn (Poland), where the Grynszpan family was taken, was one of “panic and chaos”269, with people stuck in very primitive conditions and suffering greatly.270 Sendel Grynszpan recalled the following when he testified at the Eichmann trial in 1961: “They took us to a village of about six thousand people, and we were twelve thousand. The rain was driving hard, people were fainting – on all sides one saw old men and women. Our suffering was great. There was no food, since Thursday we had not eaten…”. They were taken to a military camp and put into “stables, as there was no room elsewhere… I think it was 265 266 267 268 269 270 Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers (Deutscher Bücherbund 1981) <https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/zweig/weltgest/titlepage.html> accessed 12 September 2021. Das Bundesarchiv, Memorial Book: Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 – 1945, The Expulsion of Polish Jews from the German Reich 1938/1939 and their records <https://www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch/zwangsausweisung.html.en?page=1> accessed 12 September 2021. Ibid. See also Laurence Rees, The Holocaust: A New History (Viking / Penguin 2017). Currently Zbąszynek in Poland. Sybil Milton, ‘The Expulsion of the Polish Jews from Germany October 1938 to July 1939 (1984) 29 Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 169, 171. Joseph Marcus, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland 1919–1939 (De Gruyter Mouton 1983) 380. Intersentia 51