David Frankfurter - Shooting of Gustloff

Shooting of Gustloff

While studying in Germany, he witnessed the coming to power of the Nazis and the initiation of anti-semitic measures. The rise of Nazism in Germany and the banning of Jews from German universities compelled him to relocate to Switzerland to continue his studies, and he settled in Bern in 1934. There, among the Germans and German speaking Swiss, the Nazi movement gained ground, led by Wilhelm Gustloff. Having become convinced of the danger posed by the Nazis, Frankfurter kept an eye on Gustloff, head of the Foreign Section of the Nazi party in Switzerland, (NSDAP) who ordered the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be published in Switzerland. In 1936, unable to endure the torrent of insults, humiliations and attacks on the Jewish people, of whom he was very proud, Frankfurter bought a gun in Bern. Frankfurter found Gustloff's address easily, as it was listed in the phonebook and went to the Gustloff home; Gustloff's wife, Hedwig Gustloff, received him and showed him into the study, asking him to wait since her husband was on the telephone but would be with him presently.

When Gustloff, who was in the adjoining room, entered his office where Frankfurter was sitting opposite a picture of Hitler, Frankfurter introduced himself as a Jew and then shot him five times in the head, neck and chest; he left the premises (according to Heinz Schön, while hearing Hedwig Gustloff's cries), went into the next house and asked to use the telephone. He rang the police and confessed to the murder. Immediately he went to the police station and calmly told the police what had happened. The assassination of Gustloff rang out through Europe, thanks to Nazi propaganda directed by Joseph Goebbels. But Adolf Hitler prohibited retaliation against the Jews at the time, fearing an international boycott of the winter and summer Olympics that were due to be held in Germany, through which he wanted to propagandise the size, power and ideology of the Nazi movement on a world stage. Gustloff was made a Blutzeuge/Martyr of the Nazi cause and his assassination later became part of the propaganda serving as pretext for the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom.

Although the assassination was well received by the largely anti-Nazi population of the country, the Swiss government prosecuted the case strictly, owing to concerns about its status of neutrality. Frankfurter was convicted of the killing and sentenced to an eighteen-year prison term. His father's hair turned grey overnight when he heard of the assassination. He visited his son in prison and asked him "... who actually needed this?" In 1941, as the Nazis occupied the Vinkovci, Frankfurter father was made to stand on a table while the German soldiers spat in his face, pulled out the hair from his long beard, and struck him with their rifle butts. Frankfurter father was later killed by Ustaše in the Jasenovac concentration camp during the Holocaust.

As World War II came to a conclusion, Frankfurter applied for a pardon on February 27, 1945 which was granted on June 1, on condition that he left the country and paid restitution and court costs.