France to pay compensation for rail firm's transports to Nazi death camps
State compensation fund part of a deal to end claims against SNCF in the US court system
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 07 December, 2014, 6:14am
UPDATED : Sunday, 07 December, 2014, 6:14am
Associated Press in Paris
SNCF transported about 76,000 French Jews to Nazi concentration camps.
Thousands of Holocaust survivors and family members in the United States and elsewhere will be entitled to compensation from a US$60 million French-US fund.
The fund, announced on Friday, is to make amends to those deported by France's state rail company, SNCF, during the Nazi occupation.
As part of the deal, the US government will work to end lawsuits and other compensation claims in US courts against SNCF, which is bidding for lucrative high-speed rail and other contracts in US markets. State legislators in Maryland, New York, Florida and California have tried to punish SNCF for its Holocaust-era actions.
"This is another measure of justice for the harms of one of history's darkest eras," said the US special adviser on Holocaust issues, Stuart Eizenstat, who spent three years working with French officials on the deal.
SNCF transported about 76,000 French Jews to Nazi concentration camps, though experts disagree on its degree of guilt. SNCF has expressed regret for what happened, but argues it had no effective control over operations during the Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1944.
The compensation fund will be financed by the French government and managed by the US. The accord will be signed tomorrow in Washington, but it still needs the French parliament's approval, which could take months.
France's government has already paid more than US$6 billion in reparations, but only to French citizens and certain deportees. The new accord is to help compensate Americans, Israelis and some others who were not eligible for other French reparations programmes.
Patrizianna Sparacino-Thiellay, a French ambassador for human rights who worked closely with Eizenstat on the accord, said "hundreds" of people in the US were eligible under the new fund as direct survivors or spouses, and several thousand could be eligible as heirs.
The money should break down to about US$100,000 each for survivors and tens of thousands of dollars for spouses, said Eizenstat.
Only in 1995 did France acknowledge a direct role in the Holocaust, when then-president Jacques Chirac said the state bore responsibility. The German government has paid about €70 billion (HK$670 billion) in compensation for Nazi crimes, mainly to Jewish survivors.
France already has international accords with four countries — Poland, Belgium, Britain and the Czech Republic — over compensation for deportation victims.
Friday's deal aims to fill the remaining gaps in justice for others also affected.
US Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York, who had pushed the US government to pressure France to agree to compensation, hailed the deal as a "breakthrough in a decades-long struggle for justice".
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organisation, said: "There is no amount of money that could ever make up for the horrific injustice done to these victims and their families."
