François Genoud

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François Genoud (born October 26, 1915 in Lausanne , † May 30, 1996 in Pully ) was a Swiss banker and assistant to Nazi criminals and Arab terrorists . Among other things, he financed the legal counsel of Adolf Eichmann , Klaus Barbie and Ilich Ramírez Sánchez .

Life

While studying in Germany, the young Genoud met in a hotel in autumn 1932 Bad Godesberg with Adolf Hitler together. Back in Switzerland, he joined the National Front in 1934 . A few years later, Genoud traveled to Palestine, where he met Mohammed Amin al-Husseini . According to Gitta Sereny , al-Husseini considered Genoud to be his confidante until his death and transferred his financial affairs to him. In the years that followed, Genoud traveled frequently to Berlin and the Middle East, where he worked with German and Swiss intelligence services. In 1941 Paul Dickopf , who was active in the Abwehr and who went into hiding in Switzerland in 1942 with Genoud's help , sent him to Germany, Czechoslovakia , Hungary and Belgium . During this time Genoud made friends with several high-ranking SS men, including Karl Wolff , worked as a " Gestapo spy", granted "Dickopf a year of refuge in Lausanne" and showed himself to be an "ardent admirer of National Socialism".

Bormann's estate disposer and escape helper for Nazi criminals

After the war, Genoud contributed financially to helping Nazi criminals escape (cf. ODESSA ) and to defending Adolf Eichmann and others. At the Nuremberg Trials , Genoud made friends with Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke and later met him and Heinz Guderian in Cologne. Under circumstances that were not fully clarified, at the end of the war he obtained extensive documents and other bequests from Martin Bormann . These included transcripts of confidential conversations with Adolf Hitler and personal letters from Bormann. According to his own statement, he bought the estate from the Italian commissioner for the repatriation of works of art Rodolfo Siviero or his subordinates. According to other information, he took over the things from the SS officer and Bormann employee Helmut von Hummel while he was fleeing from Obersalzberg to South Tyrol. It is also conceivable that part of the estate ended up in Genoud's hands during this escape, while the rest was confiscated by Siviero at its destination and later sold to Genoud. In 1948 Genoud secured the publication rights to the documents from the estate agent of the Bormann orphans Theodor Schmitz . In 1955, through contracts with the relatives of Joseph Goebbels , he also acquired the copyrights to his diaries.

The authenticity of the Bormann dictations presented by Genoud is doubted by some historians. According to his biographer Willi Winkler , he manipulated alleged statements made by Hitler in the text. Together with Hans-Joachim Rechenberg , Genoud worked on the marketing of Martin Bormann's estate and in the 1961 trial against Adolf Eichmann for the interim financing of his defense.

Genoud later became involved in Arab nationalism and financed the spread of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda as well as arms deliveries to the Front de Liberation Nationale . In addition, he made investments for Hjalmar Schacht , u. a. in Morocco .

In 1964, thanks to the intervention of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser , Genoud narrowly escaped arrest for dubious financial transactions in Algeria , with 15 million US dollars in Swiss accounts, which were returned to Algeria 15 years later.

Holocaust denier and rights holder of the Goebbels diaries

Genoud did not regard Hitler as a criminal against humanity, but as an idealist who had exaggerated a little in the war with the Jews. Hitler had nothing to do with Auschwitz anyway, he maintained until the end: "This is all wrong [...] There are even documents for it." He told British journalist Gitta Sereny: "The truth is, I loved Hitler." contradicting statements on the question of the Holocaust it was concluded that he had not denied the factuality of the Holocaust as such, but only played down its dimensions; at the same time, however, he denied that there was any systematic plan to exterminate the Jews. According to other sources, he denied the Holocaust at all.

With his “legal advisor Cordula Schacht, the daughter of the National Socialist Minister [ Hjalmar Schacht ]”, so the historian Bernd Sösemann , “[Genoud] financed the defense of National Socialists [...] He forged documents and wrote blatant anti-Semitic publications. With the publication of the texts [sic!] Fabricated by Goebbels and his helpers, he persistently pursued his main goal, which had been publicly announced several times: he wanted to let the National Socialist leadership 'have an extensive say' everywhere. Goebbels 'is a great man [...] who defends himself well if you give him the opportunity to speak up'. "To this day, half-split between the administrator and Goebbels heir," every time works by Joseph Goebbels are published, royalties due to his heirs [...] In Peter Longerich's Goebbels biography (Munich 2010), the heirs are even involved in sales. "Shortly before his suicide in 1996, Genoud transferred his shares of the proceeds to his successor as administrator of the estate , Cordula Schacht, who now has "sole disposal of the copyrights for the works of Joseph Goebbels". The Random House publishing group , which wants to publish the English translation of Longerich's book, refused to pay royalties to Schacht for legal and moral reasons and was sued by them in the Munich District Court.

Contacts to international terrorism

After the February 1969 three members of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) an aircraft of El Al on the Zurich Airport in Kloten assassination had attacked, Genoud was their defender Jacques Vergès pay through one of its banks and acted in November 1969 as his adviser.

As in 1972, a Boeing 747 of Lufthansa by the Palestinian terrorists Wadi Haddad on the flight from Bombay to Frankfurt sent Genoud was kidnapped, the ransom demand. After 5 million dollars were paid to the PFLP, the machine flew to Yemen , where passengers and crew were released.

Genoud was a close confidante of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez , the terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal". In the late 1980s, Genoud visited him regularly in his exile in Damascus. When Syria expelled Sánchez in response to international pressure, he helped him to leave for Sudan . In 1994, Sánchez was arrested in Khartoum and tried in France. Genoud stayed in correspondence with him until his death and visited him several times in prison. It is believed, however, that Genoud Sánchez eventually betrayed himself.

Despite his decades of activity in the milieu of international right-wing extremism and terrorism, Genoud was not prosecuted in his Swiss homeland. His phone was tapped and his mail checked, but no concrete violations of the law could ever be proven. He had a wide range of intelligence contacts and was seen by the services as a useful contact person whom they would rather see in freedom in order to better follow the movements of international terrorists. A few weeks before Genoud's death, US Senator Al D'Amato, as chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Banking , urged the Swiss government to expose Genoud's role in the Swiss handling of Nazi gold . A few days before his death, Genoud, who had appeared in public several times as a Holocaust denier , was issued an arrest warrant for racial discrimination in Switzerland.

Genoud, who had been a member of the Swiss euthanasia association Exit since 1995 , took poison on May 30, 1996 and died.

Fonts

literature

Movies

  • Pierre Péan , Matthias Sanderson: L'Extremiste. François Genoud, de Hitler à Carlos. Nova Production, France 3 , 1996.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Michael Sontheimer : Biography about François Genoud: A freelance Nazi. In: Spiegel Online . January 14, 2011.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i David Lee Preston: Hitler's Swiss Connection. In: The Philadelphia Inquirer . January 5, 1997.
  3. ^ Dieter Schenk: Personnel and organizational links between the BKA and predecessor institutions. In: Federal Criminal Police Office (ed.): The Federal Criminal Police Office faces its history. Documentation of a series of colloquia. Hermann Luchterhand, Neuwied 2008, pp. 111–124, here p. 113. https://web.archive.org/web/20111204064733/http://www.bka.de/nn_233244/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Publikationen /Publikationsreihen/SonstigeVerofublikungen/2009The Federal Criminal Police Office presents itself to its history, templateId=raw,property=publicationFile.pdf/2009The Federal Criminal Police Office presents itself to its history.pdf
  4. ↑ Willi Winkler: The shadow man. From Goebbels to Carlos: The Mysterious Life of François Genoud. Rowohlt, Berlin 2011, pp. 70–85.
  5. ↑ Martin Bormann in the west-east twilight. In: The time . June 6, 1997, accessed February 1, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Willi Winkler: The shadow man. From Goebbels to Carlos: The Mysterious Life of François Genoud. Rowohlt, Berlin 2011, p. 12 ff.
  7. ^ Copyright episodes: Rich in stone thanks to Goebbels' diaries. In: Spiegel Online , one day . January 10, 2014, accessed September 29, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Peter Longerich: Hitler's deputy: leadership of the party and control of the state apparatus by the Hess staff and the party chancellery Bormann: A publication of the Institute for Contemporary History. KG Saur, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-598-11081-2 , p. 6.
  9. ↑ Willi Winkler: The shadow man. From Goebbels to Carlos: The Mysterious Life of François Genoud. Rowohlt, Berlin 2011, pp. 108–116.
  10. ^ Willi Winkler: Adolf Eichmann and his supporters. A small addendum to a known legal case. In: Werner Renz (Ed.): Interests around Eichmann. Israeli justice, German law enforcement and old comradeships. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2012, pp. 289–318, here p. 309 ff.
  11. ↑ Willi Winkler: The shadow man. From Goebbels to Carlos: The Mysterious Life of François Genoud. Rowohlt, Berlin 2011, p. 14.
  12. ^ The Observer . April 28, 1996; quoted after: Willi Winkler: The shadow man. From Goebbels to Carlos: The Mysterious Life of François Genoud. Rowohlt, Berlin 2011, p. 14.
  13. ↑ See for example David Lester: Suicide and the Holocaust. Nova Science, New York 2005, pp. 177–179, here 179 ( available from Google Books) and the state report (subject to registration; see below, penultimate paragraph).
  14. ^ John Follain: Jackal: the complete story of the legendary terrorist, Carlos the Jackal. Arcade, New York 1998, p. 239 ( available from Google Books).
  15. ↑ Bernd Sösemann : Propaganda - Power - History. An interim review of the documentation of the writings and dictations of Joseph Goebbels. In: The Historical-Political Book . 50/2 (2002), pp. 117–125, abstract, p. 4. (PDF; 26 kB);
  16. ↑ cf. also Willi Winkler: The shadow man. From Goebbels to Carlos: The Mysterious Life of François Genoud. Rowohlt, Berlin 2011, pp. 12-14 and pp. 202-213.
  17. ↑ Willi Winkler: The shadow man. From Goebbels to Carlos: The Mysterious Life of François Genoud. Rowohlt, Berlin 2011, p. 12 f.
  18. ^ Elisabeth Niejahr : Cordula Schacht ( memento from October 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: Der Spiegel . No. 29, July 14, 1997.
  19. ↑ Random House told it should pay to quote Joseph Goebbels in biography (en) , The Guardian. April 18, 2015. 
  20. ↑ Willi Winkler: The shadow man. From Goebbels to Carlos: The Mysterious Life of François Genoud. Rowohlt, Berlin 2011, pp. 296-304.
  21. ↑ Willi Winkler: The shadow man. From Goebbels to Carlos: The Mysterious Life of François Genoud. Rowohlt, Berlin 2011, p. 294 f.
personal data
SURNAME Genoud, François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss banker and assistant to Nazi criminals and Arab terrorists
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Lausanne
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1996
Place of death Pully