Konfrontation (1974)

David Frankfurter is a Yugoslav Jew who emigrated to Germany in the early 1930s. After January 30, 1933, when the Jewish population was subjected to numerous acts of persecution by Adolf Hitler’s regime, Frankfurter decided to leave the country later that same year and settled in Switzerland. There, he continued the university studies he had begun in Germany, while also keeping an eye on political developments in the Reich. One day, in response to the spread of Nazi ideology in Switzerland as well, Frankfurter concluded that he should make a stand against antisemitic barbarity sui generis. His target was Wilhelm Gustloff, the NSDAP’s representative abroad in Switzerland. Frankfurter bought a firearm and went to Davos. On February 4, 1936, he called on the regional group leader at his home and shot him dead. The deed caused a huge stir both at home and abroad. Opinion in Switzerland was sharply divided: some categorically rejected any act of bloodshed and feared reprisals from Hitler’s dictatorship, while others privately sympathized with the politically motivated murder for ethical reasons. Meanwhile, the Swiss justice system meticulously prepared the trial of the assassin. The stated aim was to hold a fair trial conducted according to the principles of the rule of law. Any provocation of the powerful neighbor to the north was to be avoided. During the trial, Frankfurter, son of Chief Rabbi Moritz Frankfurter, cooperated with the justice system and laid out all his motives: he had wanted to make a dramatic stand against the intensifying persecution of Jews in Germany and Switzerland. Germany sent a legal representative who officially appeared on behalf of Gustloff’s widow but was primarily meant to represent the official line of the Nazi state. Meanwhile, in Germany, the NSDAP elevated Gustloff to martyr of the movement, as it had earlier done with Nazi thug Horst Wessel, and named a KdF cruise ship after him. The court proved immune to all internal and external challenges in its conduct of the trial and remained true to its self-imposed principle of law and justice. Frankfurter was sentenced to 18 years in prison, followed by expulsion from Switzerland. Shortly after the capitulation of the Greater German Reich, David Frankfurter was released on June 1, 1945, and left Switzerland for the British Mandate of Palestine.