Holocaust survivors sue French railways

A group of holocaust survivors is suing the French railway in an court in the United States, claiming that it profited from their ordeal, it was disclosed today.

The group of French Jews who were deported to Nazi death camps launched an action against state-owned French railway company SNCF at a court in Brooklyn, New York.

Swiss banks were sued in the same court in an action which led to their agreeing to an £850m settlement with Nazi victims and their heirs, who had claimed the assets they had deposited with the banks had been stolen.

Nicole Silberkleit, a 74-year-old widow who survived the Holocaust and moved to New York from France in the 1950s, said she and other survivors launched the action because the French had never apologised for their actions.

"One of the things I want to do with this is that the Germans apologised. They paid reparations," she said.

"The French act like they never did anything wrong. There were a lot of collaborators."

Mrs Silberkleit said she and her family were taken to the Auschwitz death camp in freezing cattle cars.

"We were 11. We went at the same time," she said.

"I’m the only one of my family that came back. When we arrived, we were separated, the men from the women. Then the women walked in front of the German generals.

"One group went left. I don’t know where the other ones went. Later, someone pointed to the smokestacks."

The group claims that SNCF acted on its own initiative, not under German orders, in deporting French Jews on its own cattle trucks in at least 72 trains which carried 75,000 people to Nazi camps between March 1942 until August 17 1944, when the country was liberated.

One of the group’s lawyers, Richard Weisberg, said SNCF "in the interests of its own profit determined that they would deport individuals on the trains themselves, washed those trains, sent them back to their origin, put new people on those trains".

The Jewish group has not specified what damages it is seeking.

A judge will first have to rule on whether SNCF can be sued in a US court.

But SNCF’s American lawyer, Marshall Karlan, says the company cannot be held liable as it was under German control.

Germany gained ownership of SNCF, which was formed in 1938, when it signed an armistice in June 1940 which gave it control of most of France, except for the Vichy regime in the south, which collaborated with the Nazis.

The railway will claim in court that its workers were not collaborators but had been part of the Resistance effort.

Mr Karlan wrote in court papers: "During the war and under occupation, the railway’s personnel fought and engaged in numerous acts of resistance against the German occupant."

He added that SNCF was awarded the Legion of Honour for its part in resisting Nazi occupation.