On February 4, 1936, Wilhelm Gustloff, leader of the NSDAP, was shot dead in Davos. His assassin, 27-year-old David Frankfurter, wanted to use the action to highlight the persecution of the Jews. This docudrama describes with great precision the events leading up to the fateful day and the trial that followed. The film was selected as the Swiss entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 48th Academy Awards, but was not nominated.

Robert Tanner is a popular, courteous grocer in the provinces. No one believes the unassuming man to be malicious. And yet Tanner is seething. One night, out of the blue and with a strange calm, he kills first his wife Edith and then his young son Beni. The next morning, he leaves the place of horror with a strange feeling of liberation. On his "journey" he reveals himself to a strange woman and wants to face the press.

Frau Emma Küsters prepares dinner late one seemingly-ordinary afternoon in her seemingly-ordinary Frankfurt kitchen. She wants to add canned sausages to the stew; her irritating daughter-in-law thinks otherwise. But the point is moot: Ernst Küsters has not only murdered the personnel director at the soap factory where he's employed but succeeded that by committing suicide.