French Holocaust Survivors Promise to Fight Exclusion From New Reparations
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — French and American negotiators signed an accord Monday for $60 million in reparations for Holocaust victims transported by the French national railway to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, but lawyers for many of the victims are vowing to fight on. The agreement, hammered out over months by the State Department and French diplomats, intended to resolve hundreds of claims from Holocaust survivors or their heirs. But the deal is facing withering criticism that it was narrowly drawn to exclude French citizens deported on trains run by the national railway, known as the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français, a sizable portion of the potential claimants. “I feel terrible, just terrible,” said Rosette Adler Goldstein, 76, of Florida, whose parents and four other relatives were transported to Nazi concentration camps in trains from Drancy. “We all suffered. We all went through this, and not everyone is benefiting.” The French Foreign Ministry indicated that its citizens were excluded because survivors would already have qualified for compensation in a program enacted by reparations laws in 1948. Payments ultimately totaled more than $6 billion in compensation to survivors, covering French citizens and deportees from four other countries: Belgium, the Czech Republic, Poland and the United Kingdom. The United States will now administer the $60 million fund as part of the deal signed Monday, which must still be approved by French lawmakers in the coming months. But with the accord, the United States government will also try to end lawsuits and court claims against the S.N.C.F., which has been stymied in its bids for lucrative high-speed rail and transportation contracts. In some states, includingCalifornia, Florida and Maryland, local legislators have sought to block contracts for the French railroad because of the lingering reparations issue. “France is just doing this for the money they can get here in the United States building railroads,” Mrs. Goldstein said. “That’s it, and that’s all.” The S.N.C.F. transported about 76,000 European Jews to Nazi concentration camps, though train authorities have long insisted that they were forced to carry out the deportations. In 2011, the chairman of the S.N.C.F. expressed sorrow for what happened, but characterized the railroad as operating under duress, forced to participate as a “cog in the Nazi extermination machine.” Its role remains part of exhibitions about occupation during the war, including a new exhibit on French collaboration in the National Archives in Paris with black and white photos of the deportations and German officers standing beside an S.N.C.F. train. The railway did not take part in the negotiations, but in November it announced a five-year plan to spend 3.5 million euros, or about $4.3 million, on the Shoah Memorial and education programs in France, Israel and the United States, with €2 million of that allocated for the United States. A spokeswoman said the rail company would not comment about the accord. Stuart Eizenstat, the American special adviser on Holocaust issues who negotiated the agreement, said the arrangement broke new ground by creating a system in which some heirs of survivors would qualify for benefits. The two countries also exchanged a side letter noting that French heirs could apply for benefits from an orphan’s program that was started in 2000 and had also distributed funds to people outside France, he said. “It’s an extremely just and quite remarkable program given that 70 years after the fact that they are trying to compensate people,” he said of the new agreement. “There are thousands of people who because they are not French never got a nickel who will now be dividing $60 million.” Harriet Tamen, a New York lawyer who has worked on the case for about 10 years and represents about 900 clients in the United States, France and other countries, said advocates would continue to look for ways to block transportation contracts for the S.N.C.F. “It would be fine if this was distributed fairly, but it’s not,” said Ms. Tamen, who added that because of the way the agreement was drawn, about 600 of the 900 claimants, particularly the French victims, would not qualify for the new reparations. “I would rather see more people get less money than a few people get a lot. How do you say to someone who lost both parents that you get nothing?” One of them is Josiane Piquard, 75, of Bois-le-Roi, France, a retired nurse who lost most of her Jewish family, including her mother and grandmother, who were both transported on the S.N.C.F. trains to concentration camps. At the time, she said, she and her sister were baptized and hidden during the war, cared for by Catholic sisters. “We will receive nothing,” she said of the newly signed accord. “This is not good for me. For me, the S.N.C.F. is responsible, and so is the French government.” Like most heirs, she could not have qualified for reparations under the 1948 French law because only survivors or their spouses, not their children, could claim benefits. The new reparations fund will be administered by the United States, because most of those benefiting live in the United States, according to the French Foreign Ministry. It is not clear how many months it will take to ratify the agreement. |