The ship’s namesake was a German-born Swiss and a nasty piece of work who led a small Nazi Party in Switzerland. He and others agitated pressed, threatened, spoke, and politicked for Hitler in the small mountain country, hoping to take over Switzerland from within. In 1936, Gustloff was shot and killed by David Frankfurter, a young Jewish man from Yugoslavia who had begun his college education in Germany in 1931. Frankfurter witnessed the rise of the Nazis to power and saw the hateful changes that had come over Germany in a short time. In 1934, Frankfurter moved to Switzerland to continue his education. In Switzerland, he worked to ensure that the Swiss, especially the Jews of Switzerland, knew what life under the Nazis was like. In 1936, seeing Nazis in the streets in small but growing numbers, Frankfurter went to Gustloff’s house and killed him with a gun he had bought shortly before.