Ernst vom Rath
Ernst Eduard vom Rath (b. 3 June, 1909 in Frankfurt-am-Main - k. 9 November 1938 in Paris) was a member of the German nobility and a German Foreign Office diplomat. He was working in 1938 as Third Secretary and Counsellor at the German Embassy in Paris. He was murdered in cold blood by Herschel Grynszpan, a jew from Galicia, then occupied by Poland under a League of Nations Mandate, who fired five bullets into him. Grynszpan's parents had left Poland under anti-jewish laws and agitation and entered Germany. The German authorities had promptly sent them back to Poland. Grynszpan went to the German Embassy to complain, and being told there was nothing they could do about it he murdered vom Rath on the spot, firing five bullets into him. The news of the murder sparked immediate outrage and reaction and pogroms in Germany commonly referred to as Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass.