Ernst Eduard vom Rath (June 3, 1909–November 9, 1938) was a German diplomat. He is most noted for his assassination in Paris in 1938 by a Jewish youth, Herschel Grynszpan. The assassination triggered Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass."
Vom Rath born in Frankfurt am Main, the son of a high-ranking public official. He attended a school in Breslau, and then studied law at Bonn, Munich and Königsberg, until 1932, when he joined the Nazi Party and became a career diplomat. Two years later he became a member of the SA, the party paramilitary. In 1935, after a posting in Bucharest, he was posted to the German embassy in Paris.
In November 1938 he was fatally shot by a 17-year-old Jewish youth, Herschel Grynszpan, who had fled from Germany to France. The reason Grynszpan chose vom Rath as his victim is not known with certainty, but was probably anger over news that his family was being deported from Germany to Poland. Vom Rath's death was used by the Nazi regime to launch the anti-Jewish pogrom known as the "Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht).