David Frankfurter

David Frankfurter (Hebrew: דוד פרנקפורטר; 9 July 1909 – 19 July 1982) was a Croatian Jew known for assassinating Wilhelm Gustloff, the founder and leader of the Swiss branch of the Nazi Party, in February 1936 in Davos, Switzerland. He surrendered and confessed, telling the police that "I fired the shots because I am a Jew."

Frankfurter was sentenced to 18 years in prison for murder. Shortly after V-E Day, he was granted a parliamentary pardon and released. As he left prison, sympathetic crowds cheered him as a hero.

Frankfurter was born in Daruvar, Croatia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later part of Yugoslavia for years), to a Jewish family: father Mavro and mother Rebekka (née Figel) Frankfurter. His father was a rabbi in Daruvar and later the chief rabbi in Vinkovci, where the Frankfurter family relocated in 1914. Frankfurter was a sickly child and suffered an incurable periostitis for which he underwent seven operations between the ages of six and twenty-three. His doctors feared he would not live a normal lifespan. He graduated from elementary and later secondary school, in 1929, with high marks.

After completing his basic education, he began studying medicine. His father sent him to Germany to study dentistry, first in Leipzig and then in 1931 in Frankfurt, the town of his ancestors.

While studying in Germany, Frankfurter witnessed the Nazis coming to power and their imposition of anti-semitic measures. The rise of Nazism in Germany and the banning of Jews from German universities compelled him to move 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). The latter man ordered the propaganda piece Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903) to be published there for distribution.

Motivated by such insults and attacks on Jewish people, Frankfurter bought a gun in Bern in 1936 and resolved to assassinate Gustloff. Frankfurter found Gustloff's address, which was listed in the phone book. On 4 February 1936, he went to the Gustloff home; Gustloff's wife Hedwig received him and showed him into the study, asking him to wait since her husband was on the telephone.

When Gustloff, who was in the adjoining room, entered his office where Frankfurter was sitting opposite a picture of Adolf Hitler, the young man pulled out his revolver and shot Gustloff five times: in the head, neck and chest. He left the premises and prepared to commit suicide. However, he was unable to follow through, and instead turned himself in to the police.

The assassination of Gustloff was widely publicized throughout Europe, especially due to Nazi propaganda directed by Joseph Goebbels. Adolf Hitler prohibited an immediate retaliation against the Jews of Germany at the time, fearing an international boycott of the winter and summer Olympics that were due to be held in Germany. He wanted to use the Games to promote propaganda on the world stage about the size, power and ideology of the Nazi movement. Nevertheless, an editorial on the front page of Völkischer Beobachter demanded Frankfurter's execution.