Posted on 06/07/2006 10:52:51 PM PDT by MadIvan
FRANCE'S state-owned railway, the SNCF, yesterday said it would appeal a conviction for complicity in crimes against humanity in which it was ordered to pay compensation along with the French government for deporting Jews during the Second World War.
It is the first time a French public enterprise has been convicted for its role in the Holocaust and campaigners hailed the ruling as a landmark decision. Previous attempts to bring the SNCF to justice had failed after the company argued it had no choice but had been forced to transport Jews by the Nazi occupiers, even though they transported them in cattle wagons and invoiced the French state after the war for over 210,000 French francs in third-class tickets.
The successful case was brought by the MEP for the French Green Party, Alain Lipietz and his sister Helene.
Denounced by neighbours after taking refuge near the south-western town of Pau, their father and several other relatives were arrested on 8 May, 1944, and transported in cattle wagons to Drancy, a notorious transit camp on the outskirts of Paris dubbed "the ante-chamber of Auschwitz". The Lipietz family were held at Drancy in abominable conditions for three months until the camp was liberated on 17 August, 1944.
Mr Lipietz's father Georges, who launched the action in 2001, died in 2003, but his family continued the legal battle. On Tuesday, a court in Toulouse ordered the French state and the SNCF to pay 62,000 euros (£43,000) in compensation to the family.
Mr Lipietz said: "It is the first time in history that the state and the SNCF as such have been condemned. The court recognised that these were not the actions of individuals, or of some collaborator or another, but the responsibility of the state."
Yves Baudelot, the lawyer acting for the SNCF, said: "I'm amazed by the ruling. I can't understand it."
He had argued the SNCF had been forced to co-operate. "The SNCF had no choice. The [Nazis] told the SNCF by letter they had to do everything the Germans wanted, and if someone refused they would be shot," he said.
In recent years the SNCF has made exemplary efforts to try to come to terms with its contradictory war record by making public its wartime archives. These show that not only did the company transport tens of thousands of Jews but that some 8,900 railway workers were shot for acts of resistance.
Several historians and leading members of France's Jewish community, the largest in Europe, said they did not agree with the court's decision.
"Of course we would have liked the railway workers to lie down across the tracks, that the director refused to obey, that, at the very minimum, they didn't send in the bill ... but we don't live in a world where everyone is a hero," said French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, whose son Arno was one of the lawyers representing the SNCF in the case.
Theo Klein, the former head of the French Jewish umbrella group, CRIF, and himself a former deportee, said: "It seems to me that the SNCF was under German orders even if it was by the intermediary of the French state".
However, Judge Jean-Paul Julliere found that both the state and the SNCF had committed "a fault".
"[The SNCF] never issued either an objection nor a protest at the execution of these transports carried out at the request of the interior minister." The SNCF "systematically billed these transport charges to the state at the third-class tariff and it continued to demand payment after the liberation".
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Why France? Why not Germany?
The other group I have sympathy for are French Jews. It's not well known, but prior to the Iraq War, they had a pro-America demonstration in Paris.
Regards, Ivan
Because Germany didn't *have* much of a rail system left after the war - AND the French railway continued to demand payment long after the war was over and France was liberated.
The latter is the damning point in my mind.
Vichy scumbag ping!
I don't recall a lot of sympathy for the other war criminals and their "I was ordered to do it" defense at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials.
Didn't big chunk of the country including those who were in the government (bar some Resistance force) put up white flags and practically collaborated with the Germans? Are they going to be sued as well?
'The Scotsman this week has been excellent in providing a daily dose of Schadenfreude.'
Which is even more amazing when you consider how the Scots consider the French their best and oldest ally, AKA The Auld Alliance.
This would make sense and perhaps get them off the hook - IF they hadn't continued to try to collect the money "owed" to them for transporting the exterminees *AFTER* the Americans had liberated France and kicked the Germans out. Apparently, they continued to try to get the French government to pay for years.
'How I despise France -- and its countrymen.'
Most of your country felt differently 230 years ago when French forces were your ally against the British! They even sent you that nice big french statue that has pride of place in New York and has become the symbol of your country. Vive La France! :D
/mischeviousness off
Impressive (if true) and hard to dismiss.
It's true they helped us out, but I don't believe their motives were pure. It was a sneaky way for them to stick it to Britain.
'It's true they helped us out, but I don't believe their motives were pure. It was a sneaky way for them to stick it to Britain.'
I agree with you entirely on that one, but we got our own back in 1815 when we finally wiped the frogs off the map as a political and military force for all time. Perhaps you should send 'em that statue back now - don't bother with the stamps,let the frogs pay when it arrives! :D
'nuff said
Because after Germany, ze French were ze biggest suppliers of men, war materiel and Jews to feed ze Nazi war machine.
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