France: Railway Fined for Holocaust Deportations

A court in Toulouse ordered the state and the national railroad company SNCF to pay $80,000 to a Jewish family whose members were delivered to the World War II transit camp at Drancy, outside Paris, that sent Jews off to Nazi concentration camps. It was the first time that the state and the railway had been found liable for their role in the wartime deportation of thousands of French Jews. The suit was brought by two brothers in 2001. They were arrested by the Gestapo and transported to Drancy in 1944, where they remained until it was liberated by the Allies a few months later. According to the plaintiffs' lawyer, Rémi Rouquette, the court found that the state did nothing "when it had a chance to" and that the railway did not object and in fact billed the state for third-class travel although it used freight and cattle cars.