David Frankfurter became famous for a murder he committed at the age of 26. In February 1936, Jewish David Frankfurter shot and killed Wilhelm Gustloff, the regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Switzerland, in Davos. Young Frankfurter had witnessed the rise of the anti-Semitic Nazis in Germany in early 1933 and shortly after he emigrated to Switzerland. Through his assassination, he intended to send a message against the persecution of Jews and the criminal Nazi regime. Following his murder of Gustloff, he surrendered to the Swiss police.

In December 1936, he was sentenced to 18 years in the Sennhof prison in Chur, Switzerland, with subsequent deportation. The Swiss government refused the extradition request from the Nazi regime. In the summer of 1945, shortly after the end of World War II, he was released from Sennhof but had to leave Switzerland. Frankfurter immigrated to Tel Aviv and later became an officer in the Israeli army. The Canton of Graubünden lifted the deportation order against him in 1969. Aside from his imprisonment, David Frankfurter paid a high price for his assassination, as the Nazis had tortured and killed his father in a revenge act in 1941.