Attendees at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk. US officials say they will pull visas and deport people who trivialise Kirk’s murder, part of intensifying scrutiny of visa applicants’ views. Photograph: Loren Elliott/ The New York Times
On November 7th, 1938, a slight, 17-year-old German speaker appeared at the opulent German Embassy in Paris.
Herschel Grynszpan was looking for the German ambassador, the suave and virulently anti-communist Johannes von Welczeck.
In fact, Grynszpan had just brushed past von Welczeck at the giant revolving doors leading into the embassy – the ambassador heading one way, the assassin the other. At the reception, Grynszpan was met by Ernst vom Rath, a middle-ranking, Nazi-appointed diplomat.
Realising that he had missed the ambassador, his real target, Grynszpan pulled out a revolver and, content to kill any Nazi, shot vom Rath. As he fired, he shouted: “This is for the 12,000 Polish Jews.”
When the news reached Berlin, Adolf Hitler immediately promoted the deceased vom Rath to the position of German hero as his minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, set about a plan.
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