French national railway carrier SNCF may have to disclose its involvement in transporting people to concentration and work camps during WWII if the company wishes to apply for a contract to run a new high speed train between Los Angeles and San Francisco, UK newspaper the Telegraph reported Monday.
The Holocaust Survivor Responsibility Act was approved unanimously by members of the California housing and transportation committee in June and is expected to soon pass the California legislature. The bill calls for companies vying for the lucrative $45 billion contract to run the high speed California railway to provide records of their WWII operations and details on whether or not they paid victims restitution. The proposal replaces an initial bill which called for the exclusion of companies with Holocaust links from the California project altogether.
SNCF was responsible for carrying some 75,000 Jews to Nazi camps during WWII, but has argued that it did so at the behest of the French authorities at the time.
Only 30 Holocaust survivors remain in California, most of them over ninety-years-old, but the assemblyman who proposed the bill, Bob Blumenfield (Dem.), felt a responsibility to them.
“There could be a train made by the very same company that took them to the camps less than a few miles from their house. If that company hasn’t made amends, that to me is unconscionable.
“SNCF provided the trains, personnel and logistics that sent thousands of Jews, American soldiers and others to concentration camps. SNCF was paid by the Nazis for the deportations per head, per kilometer.”
SNCF’s US head, Denis Doute, testified before the committee that approved the bill, stating that the company cooperated with the Nazi authorities under the threat of death to employees and their families. The company has said that they will fully comply with the bill.
Bidding for the railway contract was scheduled to begin next year and construction should begin in 2012.
(Source: Jpost)
The French National Railroad had been a government agency since prior to World War II. When France surrendered, control of it, and all other government agencies, effectively went to the Germans. SCNF was as involved in the holocaust, as say the French post office, or the French police, or each and every agency of the French government. It is even like they had shareholders who were making a profit on the deal.
FRANCE is an issue. Post-surrender, they were quite willing to help the holocaust. But complaining about a single government department is absurd. [which isn't to say the US should outsource running local railroads to foreign corporations, but that's a different issue]
Wait until it comes time for the Zionists to be held accountable for what they have done to Jews and Arabs and everyone else. Just wait and see.
I think there is more like 300 survivors in Los Angeles. If there is only 30 like the article states, then I know 20%
The article claims that there are only 30 Shoa survivors in California????
And Mercedes-Benz was responsible for the slave labor of thousands of our fellow Jews.
#1 akuperma,
France meted out justice to some of the most important officials of the Vichy regime; its leader Pierre Laval was executed — by the French. Two Jews served as Prime Minister of France during the ten years after the war and during the 1950s France was Israel’s biggest supporter and supplier of armaments.
(Since then, France’s position regarding Israel has varied quite a bit depending on whom was in power. The conservatives De Gaulle and Chirac were hostile — Chirac personally was responsible for getting Saddam Hussein the Osirak reactor. The socialist Mitterand was friendly even though he had been a minor functionary in the Vichy regime. At least Chirac did make an official policy for the actions of the Vichy regime.)
The problem is that all the high speed rail companies capable of completing a project of this magnitude are European and have rather nasty pasts.