Review of "A Proud Jewish Boy –The Herschel Grynszpan Story"
Documentary | Israel | 2025 | Director: Isri Halpern | German, Hebrew, French with English subtitles, and English | 90 minutes | Wed May 20, 7p.m.
Winner: Best Documentary Feature, Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, Best Israeli Documentary Award, Haifa International Film Festival
Isri Halpern’s documentary, Proud Jewish Boy, is nothing less than fascinating, weaving together a very complex well researched story from World War II, with many questions remain unanswered.
The movie, which won the Best Israeli Documentary Award at the Haifa International Film Festival is about Herschel Grynszpan, a good looking 17-year-old Jewish refugee who assassinated a German diplomat Ernst Vom Rath in Paris in 1938. The Nazis used this as a pretext for the unleashing of Kristallnacht, one of the most violent pogroms in modern European history, which led directly to the Holocaust. Grynszpan was arrested but then was never put on trial, and the film sets out to find out find out the truth about why this was the case, examining how his story had inconvenient truth for all sides. The film patches together interesting interviews with Grynspan’s family members, as well as German, French and Israeli historians. The assassination took place after Herschel received a postcard from his family who were Polish Jews who had immigrated to Germany in 1911, saying that they had been expelled from Germany to Poland and were now stateless.
When France succumbed to the Nazis in 1940, Grynszpan who had been in French custody was transferred into German custody, where he was well treated by the Nazis as it appears the Nazis initially planned a spectacular show trial that would attempt to justify the destruction of European Jewry. But something went wrong.
According to documents discovered years later, Grynszpan told German interrogators that his relationship with vom Rath had been intimate and sexual. There was other evidence that vom Rath had liked young boys and there were suggestions that Hershel, who came from a very poor family and who was found with a lot of money on him possibly had been a male prostitute. Whether this narrative was true is still hotly debated. It’s possible that Hershel said he had a sexual affair with vom Rath because he knew it would have explosive implications for the Nazis. The German criminal code criminalized homosexuality, and Nazi leadership was obsessed with the idea of sexual “degeneracy.” A public trial of Grynszpan would have risked exposing a deep scandal and undermining the Nazi regime. Grynspan’s trial was canceled, and when the war was over it was not known what had happened to him. It is still a mystery to this day.
There are also suggestions that Grynszpan slept with vom Rath because the latter had promised that he would get him a permit to be able to stay in Germany. There are theories that when Grynszpan was initially arrested, he claimed he had shot the German diplomat after learning that his family was expelled to Germany from Poland and the assassination was for purely for political reasons .At that stage Grynszpan wanted a trial as he wanted to show the world how the Nazis were mistreating Jews. His father may have been the one to suggest that a crime of passion be invented in order to not have his son tried for political reasons, with a much more aggravated punishment. But when Herschel Grynszpan’s French lawyer initially wanted to defend him in this way, Herschel refused as he wanted a political trial to show the world what was really happening to Jews who had nowhere to go.
Proud Jewish Boy presents many strands of evidence, including contradictory evidence, and theories. Halpern’s film traces how vom Ruth’s family attempted to deny the possibility of a homosexual relationship and follows obscure testimony from a Jewish doctor who claimed to have treated vom ath for a sexually transmitted disease. It includes intelligence files suggesting that Grynszpan may have been deliberately kept alive because his testimony was still considered valuable for a Nazi show trial.
By all accounts Grynszpan was impulsive, angry, and politically naive.Yet Halpern emphasizes a crucial point often overlooked: Grynszpan did not try to escape but rather surrendered to French police. This suggests he wanted a political trial so he could tell the world what was happening to Jews, even if that meant his death.
There is riveting footage in the film from Adolf Eichman’ s trial in Israel where Herschel’s father gives testimony—a sense of poetic justice.
The film also traces postwar sightings allegedly of Grynszpan, one of which was published in major newspapers, although Halpern said he doubted it was genuine.
There are many twists and turns in this recommended documentary which is really well worth watching, and very educational. It kept my full interest from start to finish,
