Nazi newspapers were bitterly critical today of the 18-year sentence asked by public prosecutor in the Chur, Switzerland, trial of David Frankfurter, young Jewish medical student, for the slaying last February of Wilhelm Gustloff, Swiss Nazi leader.
Der Angriff, mouthpiece of Propaganda Mr. St. Paul Joseph Goebbels, voiced its auger under a banner headline saying:
“Only Eighteen Years’ Imprisonment Demanded for Frankfurter.”
The paper was enraged by Swiss newspaper criticism that German coverage of the trial was for propaganda purposes. It referred to the American, British and other correspondents covering the trial as “partisans of World Jewry.”
German coverage of the trial is taking the form of the most violent anti-Jewish propaganda, the Voelkischer Beobachter, Chancellor Hitler’ paper, even attacking Zionism for “sympathizing with Moscow.” (Soviet Russia bans all Zionist activities.)
A red-letter banner on page one of the paper urges Germans to “lower their flags in honor of a martyr of the Nazi movement, murdered by Jewish hatred.”
The paper asserts that Frankfurter, being religious, did not kill Gustloff on the Sabbath, but “waited until Tuesday, which is the Jewish lucky day.”
Newspaper correspondents here understand that the authorities are closely watching the reporting of the German reaction to the trial and stringent measures may be taken against those whose dispatches are not considered satisfactory.
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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.
