The French Government today formally expressed its regrets to Germany for the attempted vengeance assassination here this morning of Ernst von Rath, third! Secretary of the Reich Embassy, by a 17-year-old Polish Jew.
“I wanted to avenge my parents, from whom i received a letter which grieved me so much that i decided to kill some member of the german embassy,” the young assailant, Herschel Grynszpan, was quoted as saying. “my parents, from whom I had not heard for a long time, toll me they were in a railroad car on the German-Polish frontier and had no idea of what was going to happen to them. they were under threat of expulsion. since the day I received that letter I had been brooding over their fate and that is why I decided to do what I have done today.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.