When Gustloff , who was in the adjoining room , entered his office where Frankfurter was sitting opposite a picture of Hitler , Frankfurter introduced himself as a Jew and then shot him five times in the head , neck and chest ; he left the premises ( according to Heinz Schön , while hearing Hedwig Gustloff 's cries ) , went into the next house and asked to use the telephone . He rang the police and confessed to the murder . Immediately he went to the police station and calmly told the police what had happened . The assassination of Gustloff rang out through Europe , thanks to Nazi propaganda directed by Joseph Goebbels . But Adolf Hitler prohibited retaliation against the Jews at the time , fearing an international boycott of the winter and summer Olympics that were due to be held in Germany , through which he wanted to propagandise the size , power and ideology of the Nazi movement on a world stage . Gustloff was made a Blutzeuge/Martyr of the Nazi cause and his assassination later became part of the propaganda serving as pretext , along with Herschel Grynszpan 's assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath , for the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
David Frankfurter