France will pay $ 60 million to Holocaust survivors

A message for Holocaust survivors and their families: thousands of families of Holocaust survivors who were led to the death camps in trains of the French national railway company SNCF, are expected to receive compensation from the French government. This was announced on Friday by the French foreign minister and the US State Department.

The compensation arrangement in question will be around $ 60 million, and it was achieved following the conditions set by the authorities in the State of Maryland in the United States, who conditioned the company's huge tender to pave the purple railway line valued at $ 2.2 billion, with providing compensation to victims of the Holocaust and their families.

It should be noted that 76,000 Jews were deported from France to death camps, after its occupation by the Nazis, only 2,500 were able to return alive to France. Paris authorities estimate that there are between 8,000 to 13,000 people in France whose parents perished in the death camps.

Survivors who are still alive will receive up to $ 100,000, while the heirs of survivors now dead will receive compensation of tens of thousands of dollars.

The decision to reach an understanding and agreement, arrived after more and more calls were sounded in Maryland not to allow the French railway company, which is owned by the French government, to run for the tender for construction of the purple railway line in Maryland, about 25 km - until the company will reimburse the US Holocaust survivors.

In the past, a French court ordered the state and the SNCF railway company to pay damages totaling EUR 60 thousand to a French citizen who sued them, since they took part in the deportation of Jews during World War II.

The decision will also allow American or Israeli Holocaust survivors to receive compensation from the trains, unlike the situation so far with only residents of France who were entitled to compensation.

The plaintiff, a representative of the European Parliament Alan Lifschitz, claimed that his father and three of his relatives were taken by train to extermination camps through the French railway company SNCF. The US administration has promised to close all files opened in the US against the French railway company, when the agreement between France and Washington will be signed tomorrow (Monday) in Washington.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!