Frankfurter to Hear Verdict Today in Slaying of Nazi Leader

David Frankfurter, incurably ill Yugoslavian Jewish medical student who last February assassinated Wilhelm Gustloff, Swiss Nazi leader, will know on Monday what penalty he must pay for the crime.

His four-day trial before five judges, attended by 250 newspaper correspondents, ended yesterday after the 27-year-old student refused to make a final statement in his own defense because Presiding Justice A. R. Ganzoni would not allow him to recount anti-Semitic experiences he underwent while a student in Germany.

Frankfurter faces 18 years in prison for the assassination, which he confessed and which he alleged was motivated by a desire to avenge Nazi persecution of Jews.

In his concluding speech, Dr. Eugen Curti, defense attorney, said the murder was an error and had been committed while in a state of extreme mental excitement. He accused the authorities of failing to provide the proper medical examination for the defendant in fear of the results.

Friedrich Grimm, summing up for Gustloff’s widow, admitted that persecution of Jews in Germany motivated Frankfurter’s act but pleaded that the court had no right to consider Nazi treatment of Jews because this was a political matter. He declared that political murder should be treated as common murder.

Attacking the prosecution’s thesis that Frankfurter personally had not been persecuted by the Nazis, Dr. Curti declared that his client’s health and mind had been broken by the Nazi anti-Semitic campaign.

Testimony of psychiatrists regarding the complex personality of Frankfurter proved that the young student was not responsible for the murder, Dr. Curti declared. Gustloff was the victim of his hatred because he represented Nazism in Switzerland, he said.