-The day the Holocaust began was November 7, 1938, when Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish-German Jew, shot and killed Eduard vom Rath, an officer in the German embassy in Paris. Grynszpan proclaimed that he wanted `to avenge the great wrong which had been visited on his fellow Jews in general and on his family in particular.' What followed was the Kristallnacht, in which 265 synagogues were destroyed, 7,500 Jewish businesses looted, and 30,000 Jews sent to concentration camps--the first step in the Holocaust. Schwab's father was one of those sent to the camps. Schwab became interested in the Grynszpan case and eventually met an embassy clerk who had been a key witness at Grynszpan's trial, as well as Grynszpan's defense lawyer. Schwab describes Grynszpan's experiences while in French and German custody and gives a detailed background of the assassin-hero. The author asserts that in the final analysis, Grynszpan performed a valuable service for European Jews--for although his dee —Booklist