Nazi Sympathizer Commits Suicide Genoud Published Goebbels Writings; Aided Terrorism

Francois Genoud - a Nazi sympathizer, banker to Arab militants and defender of terrorists - has committed suicide. He was 81.

Genoud, who made a fortune from publishing the diaries of Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels, poisoned himself Thursday. He was aided by the Swiss pro-euthanasia group Exit, his daughter said Saturday.

Genoud was born in Lausanne in 1915 and moved to Germany when he was 15 where he acquired his national socialist ideals.

“I stayed a Nazi for the rest of my life. I never changed my colors,” Genoud said in a 1990 interview.

Adolf Hitler “was my hero and always will be,” Genoud said of the Nazi leader he met twice.

After World War II, Genoud won a long legal battle for the copyrights to the writings of leading Nazis, including Hitler’s right-hand men, Goebbels and Martin Bormann.

Genoud helped set up the Arab commercial bank in Geneva in 1958. The bank was active in lending money to Arab nationalist groups and held the fighting fund of the Algerian independence movement.

In a biography published earlier this year, Genoud admitted he had actively supported international terrorism. He said he had worked closely with the extremist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out a string of attacks against Israel and Jewish interests.

Genoud was a friend of terrorist Carlos the Jackal and helped finance his defense after his 1994 arrest. By his own count, Carlos killed 83 people in bombings, hijackings and assassinations.

In a 1992 report on extremism, the Swiss government named Genoud as the most important individual of the “Old Right” which preserved the memory of Fascism.

Genoud lived a reclusive existence in Pully.