Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
A recently found pic suggests he may have survived it...
Quote:
From a Berlin detention centre he was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin and the last official confirmation of his existence is from September 1942, which many historians have held to be the time he was likely to have been murdered by the Nazis.
After that, the trail was cold. Apart from some eyewitness accounts claiming to have seen him alive in the last weeks of the war and rumours from the late 1950s onwards that he might be living in Paris, Hamburg or Israel, there has never, until now, been any evidence that Grynszpan even survived the war. The common assumption was that he had perished when being held by the Nazis.
But Fuhrer and Prokisch, the head archivist at Vienna’s Jewish Museum, are convinced the newly-discovered photograph shows Grynszpan. A face recognition test on the photograph, taken on 3 July, 1946 in a camp for displaced persons (DPs) in Bamberg, southern Germany, returned a 95% likelihood – considered the highest possible match.
In the picture Grynszpan appears to be taking part in a demonstration of Holocaust survivors protesting British authorities’ refusal to let them emigrate to Palestine. The demonstrators are being guarded by armed US army military police standing on a lorry.
Prokisch said the photograph had been part of a set of 27 images mostly taken at DP camps which were collected by and donated to the museum by Eliezer Breuer, an emissary of Poale Agudat Israel, an organisation that prepared Jewish refugees for emigration to Palestine.
“When I first came across it I recognised him immediately. But I thought it must have been taken before the end of the war as I knew he hadn’t survived it,” Prokisch said. “People I mentioned it to thought it was an absurd idea it might be him, until I showed it to Armin Fuhrer.”
Fuhrer is one of the world’s leading authorities on Grynszpan, having spent the last five years tracing his life including trawling through thousands of archive entries that have never been viewed before. His book, Herschel, details the assassination and its shocking aftermath.
“It certainly raises more questions than it answers,” Fuhrer said of the photograph. “Not least what did he do with the rest of his life, and perhaps more importantly, how did he manage to survive the Nazis – was he protected and if so, by whom?”
Roger Moorehouse, the second world war and Third Reich historian, and author of The Devils’ Alliance and Berlin at War, said: “If the man in the photograph is indeed Herschel Grynszpan, it would solve one of the most enduring mysteries of the Third Reich. Grynszpan disappeared from the historical record in 1942 and is conventionally assumed not to have survived the war. This picture would appear to revise that assumption.”
But, sounding a note of caution, Moorehouse said: “The Nazis did not tend to permit those of their prominent prisoners who had outlived their usefulness to escape unscathed. Given Grynszpan’s notoriety, I find it a little hard to believe that they would have easily allowed him to survive.” He added, if he did survive, “it prompts a host of new questions about the circumstances of his survival and his ultimate fate”.
It's certainly interesting to imagine that he survived, though I honestly can't imagine how he would have. Even if he had fully collaborated with the Nazis -- and I'm not saying he did, I'm saying "what if" -- I seriously doubt that his value would be greater than the enmity that was felt towards him as being emblematic of the "evil" Jews. Indeed, I'm surprised that he lived as long as 1942, which would be 4 years after his murder of the German diplomat.
The only way I can imagine him surviving the war would be if he had somehow escaped from the concentration camp and remained in hiding for the rest of the war, then assumed a fake identity somewhere else. I would imagine that the Nazis would not have been willing to admit that such a high-profile prisoner escaped, which may be why the historical record of him stops at that point.
This photo is a good sign, but more research and evidence is needed before we can make solid conclusions in regards to this. After all, this photo could simply be a photo of his doppleganger.
But why would he have stayed undercover after the war?
I tend to go with this,BUT if he had colaborated with Nazis he wouldnt show his face where he might get shot.if he was still alive in 1942,the question has to be Why??.If he did survive why didnt he give testimony against anyone,or did he live under a false name worried about being discovered as not quite what people thought he was.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
