Herschel Feibel Grynszpan ( ; 28 March 1921 – last rumoured to be alive 1945 , declared dead 1960 ) was a Polish-Jewish refugee born in Germany . His assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on 7 November 1938 in Paris was used by the Nazis as a pretext to launch '' Kristallnacht '' , the antisemitic pogrom of 1938 . Grynszpan was seized by the Gestapo after the Fall of France and brought to Germany ; his fate remains unknown . It is generally assumed that he did not survive the Second World War , and he was declared dead in 1960 . A photograph of a man resembling Grynszpan was cited in 2016 as evidence to support the claim that he was still alive in Bamberg , Germany , on 3 July 1946 . He is the subject of '' The Short , Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan '' , a book by Jonathan Kirsch
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Herschel Grynszpan