In
DC,
Crimes of
French SNCF
Detailed,
Sovereign
Immunity
Opposed
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
WASHINGTON
DC,
November 16 --
From 1941
through 1944
French
state-owned
railroad
company SNCF
transported
76,000 people
to
concentration
camps -- over
11,000 of them
children --
charging the
Nazi-controlled
government
third class
fares although
the
accommodations
were in cattle
cars.
Now
when SNCF is
sued for these
crimes against
humanity, the
company raises
the
defense of
soverign
immunity. The
logic is that
since Nicholas
Sarkozy can't
be sued by his
victims
including
recent ones
from
weapons drops
in Libya and
reprisals in
Cote d'Ivoire,
neither can
SNCF be sued,
even by
Holocaust
survivors.
Wednesday
on
Capitol Hill
in the Rayburn
House Office
Building, the
House
Committee on
Foreign
Affairs heard
from Holocaust
survivors, in
support of
H.R. 1193, the
Holocaust Rail
Justice Act,
which would
prevent
foreign
sovereign
immunity from
being raised
as a defense
by
the French
rail company
SNCF in a
class action
law suit
brought
against them
by Holocaust
survivors.
The
Committee
heard, this is
not the type
of situation
foreign
sovereign
immunity
was ever meant
to apply to.
Chairperson
Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen
moved
things along,
so the
Committee got
testimony from
Leo Bretholz,
who
survived only
by jumping
from a SNCF
train bound
for Auschwitz
carrying one
thousand other
victims. Later
he settled in
Baltimore.
SNCF train,
cattle cars to
Auschwitz
& impunity
not shown
Bretholz
said
SNCF was paid
by the Nazis
"per head and
per
kilometer." He
submitted into
the record an
invoice SNCF
submitted
"after the
Nazis were
gone." He
described how
families were
split up. For
the whole
trip, SNCF
gave "one
piece of
triangle
cheese, one
piece of bread
and no water."
An
elderly woman
on crutches
told him, "You
must do it, if
you get out,
maybe you
can tell the
story." He
managed to
bend the bars
of the windows
of the cattle
car and got
out. Of SNCF
convoy number
42, only five
survived.
For
SNCF, he
said, "it's
all about
money."
Seventy years
is enough, he
concluded.
Yes, it is.
And what does
the French
government
say?
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