PRESS RELEASE For release on September 5, 2000

CONTACT: Harriet Tamen, Tel : 1 212-583-1453 – Fax : 1 212 826 93 07

A law suit was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on behalf of victims of the Holocaust who were transported to Nazi slave labor and extermination camps by the French Railroad, Société Nationale des Chemin de Fer, SNCF. This class action lawsuit demands damages for SNCF’s complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity, as affirmed by the Principles of Nuremberg, for the deportation of civilian French residents to Nazi death and slave labor camps. SNCF worked directly with the Nazis to assure the availability of deportation trains; SNCF set their schedules and routes, knew their destinations, and cleaned and disinfected the cars after each trip.

From March 1942 until August 1944, some 75, 000 Jews and tens of thousands of other «undesirables» were deported by SNCF from France to Nazi death camps -- especially Auschwitz. Fewer than three per cent of the Jewish population survived. One SNCF deportation train left Compiègne, France on July 2, 1944 with 2,166 «passengers.» When the train arrived in Dachau three days later, one quarter -- 536 -- of the «passengers» were dead.

SNCF was at all times under civilian French control during World War II and its complicity was essential for the «Final Solution.» SNCF all times had the moral choice to decline to cooperate. Instead, they crammed the deportees into cattle cars, while receiving a fare for each «passenger.»

After World War II ended, SNCF made no effort to compensate those it had ill-treated and deported during the War, or surviving members of their families. In fact, SNCF sought to receive more payments for its wartime activities. After the War, SNCF sent at least one demand for payment for the deportation trains. SNCF was duly paid.

This suit is being brought on behalf of the survivors of these deportation transports and their heirs and beneficiaries, now living in the United States, France, Israel and in other countries.