France is to pay $60 million to American Holocaust survivors as reparations for being transported to death camps on French trains, putting an end to a drawn-out international legal battle between the U.S. state of Maryland and France.
Freight cars from France's state rail company SNCF were used to transport tens of thousands of Jews to concentration camps during World War II, which the company said it had no control over, The Telegraph reported. About 250 Holocaust survivors in the U.S. are to each receive reparations of up to $100,000, as well as $10,000 and up for family members of now-deceased survivors.
"The objective today was to be able to provide reparations, even 70 years later, that they could claim given the trauma, the barbarity and the horror that the deportation represented for them," said Patrizianna Sparacino-Thiellay, a French ambassador for human rights, The Telegraph reported.
The agreement stems from a case Maryland brought against SNCF in an attempt to stop it from vying for contracts for a $3 billion project in the state.
Sparacino-Thiellay said SNCF had no control over the situation when the Nazis used its freight cars to transport 76,000 Jews to concentration camps from 1942 to 1944. Only about 3,000 would survive.
"SNCF had never been held responsible for the deportations. It was an instrument of the deportations. It is the responsibility of the French authorities," the ambassador said.
France has previously paid more than $6 billion in reparations to Holocaust survivors, but that money only went to its citizens, The Telegraph reported.
Stuart Eizenstat, who negotiated on behalf of the U.S., welcomed the "historic agreement" as "another measure of justice for the harms of one of history's dark eras."
