The maximum penalty that can be meted out to David Frankfurter for assassinating Wilhelm Gustloff, Nazi leader, is fifteen years in prison, it was learned today.
He will go on trial in the town of Chur before a court of five judges within three or four months. In the interim, an exhaustive investigation into the murder will be conducted by the authorities.
The Swiss press was unanimous today in condemning political murders. Newspapers declared that the act was an isolated act of fanaticism resulting from “spiritual derangement” caused by the reign of terror in Germany.
The German Government was criticized for seizing the case as a pretext to attempt to force Switzerland to limit freedom of the Liberal and anti-Nazi press.
The Neue Zuercher Zeitung, denying that the great body of the Jews are to blame, stated that there is always ground for the fear that an “anonymous desperado will carry out a senseless act of revenge against the representative of Nazism.”
The paper added: “The Jewish people no more than other peoples has the power to restrain short-sighted, irresponsible maniacs from rash actions. Had Frankfurter considered the effect of his act on the Jews, he would have refrained.”
The Basler National Zeitung, referring to the allegation by Hitler’s Voelkischer Beobachter that Jews employ assassination as a political weapon, asked who it was who killed Professor Theodor Lessing (exiled German Jewish philosopher assassinated by a Nazi in Praha in 1933), Walter Rathenau (Jewish Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs, slain in 1922) and Chancellor Dolfuss (killed by Nazis in Vienna in 1934.)
The paper also asked who it is that builds memorials for Rathenau’s murderers.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
