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French rail company apologises for WWII deportations ... in the US

France’s national rail operator, the SNCF, has apologised for transporting Jews to German concentration camps during World War II. But the state-owned company has yet to do so in France … the apology was made in the US as part of a bid to win contracts there.

Reuters/Peter Andrews
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The apology was made by SNCF boss Guillaume Pepy at a meeting with Florida state legislators and representatives of Jewish groups at a meeting in Fort Lauderdale at the beginning of November.

Pepy expressed the company’s “regret for the consequences of its acts”, adding that it was acting under threat of requisition, according to Le Monde newspaper.

The SNCF boss was presenting the company’s bid to build a high-speed line from Tampa to Orlando.

In Florida Democrat state representative Ron Klein had tabled a proposal that all bidders should come clean over any role they might have played in transporting prisoners between 1942 and 1944.

Earlier the California state legislature passed a bill proposed by Bob Bluenfield, also a Democrat, enforcing the same condition on bids to build a high-speed line in his state.

The SNCF transported an estimated 75,000 Jews to death camps during the war.

In August Pepy promised that the company would open its archives but insisted that it was acting “under the yoke of the occupier”. The company seems to have changed its line in the light of the billions of dollars that can be earned by the contracts, not only by the SNCF but also by train builder Alstom.

Green Euro-MP Alain Lipietz, whose family lost a court case in France over the deportation of four of its members, welcomed the apology on Friday but declared it “lamentable” that it was made in the US “just to improve [the company’s] position in a bid and not to prevent it happening again one day”.

“I would encourage the SNCF to face up to this page of history, so as to dispel myths,” commented French human rights ambassador François Zimeray, while regretting that the tragedy had been “exploited for protectionist ends”.
 

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