They said he started it all.
On November 7, 1938, a gentle looking seventeen-year-old Jewish boy, an illegal resident in France, entered the German embassy in Paris and fired three bullets at German diplomat Ernst vom Rath,
Two days later, vom Rath died of his wounds. And Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, sent the German people to take revenge on all Jews. More than a thousand synagogues were burned, hundreds of Jews were murdered or committed suicide, thousands of businesses were looted, and tens of thousands of men were sent to concentration camps.
Goebbels, the master of propaganda, called it “Kristallnacht”.
“Proud Jewish Boy” is a fascinating documentary journey following the story of the young assassin Herschel Grynszpan, the boy accused by Jews of being responsible for the pogrom that started the Holocaust and by the Germans of starting World War II.
Through new historical discoveries, rare archival materials, family members and researchers who investigated the affair, the film brings for the first time the full, yet untold story of the circumstances that led to the assassination, and the dramatic sequence of events that followed it, an unknown story that culminates in a battle of wits between Goebbels, the second most powerful man in the Nazi regime, and the “poor Jewish boy” from the infamous Leine neighborhood in Hanover , who refused to turn the other cheek.
