Legal Ethics after Auschwitz: The Case against SNCF

It is an honor to be among those who speak about the unspeakable; who try to make sense of history in a world that would rather forget the past. Among those that would rather forget are the French, including the French National Railroad, SNCF. Choices and consequences and law and morality--all intersect in the case we have brought against SNCF. SNCF made certain choices, and, as a consequence, tens of thousands of people died. Attempting to ignore all issues of morality, SNCF simply argues that it is beyond the reach of law. The first SNCF train deporting Jews left France for Auschwitz on March 27, 1942. The last one left France on August 17, 1944, one week before the liberation of Paris. SNCF operated more than seventy-two convoys of trains deporting 75,000 Jews and tens of thousands of other undesirables, including Gypsies, Spanish civil-war refugees, homosexuals, and resistance fighters. Also on the trains, there were over 186 U.S., British, and Canadian pilots shot down over France. Fewer than three percent of those deported survived. This transportation was essential for the success of the final solution. SNCF made available the necessary rolling stock, scheduled the trips, supplied the employees, and cleaned and disinfected cars after each trip. SNCF had a choice. It could have refused to cooperate, or it could have engaged in acts of passive and active resistance. Instead, to protect its autonomy, SNCF helped the Nazis. Even though individual SNCF employees were active in the French resistance, and German troop trains were occasionally sabotaged, the SNCF deportation trains kept running. Not one single deportation train was ever sabotaged. SNCF was and remained under civilian control during the war. In order to maintain that control and independence, SNCF willingly collaborated with the Germans. There was no gun to anyone's head, no force, no coercion. The wagons were not passenger cars; most of them had previously been used for cattle. Sanitation facilities were nonexistent--a bucket in the comer. Those on the trains included the sick, the elderly, pregnant women, babies, and young children. The trips took days, often in extreme heat or freezing cold; many did not survive. One train left the French holding camp at Compiegne, Fance, on July 2, 1944, with 2,166 passengers. When it arrived at Dachau three days later, 536 were already dead. SNCF was paid for transporting passengers on the deportation trains--per head, per kilometer, standard commercial fares, the same fares for deportees as for ordinary travelers taking an ordinary trip. Billing was handled the same way it was handled for all commercial trains. Like any good business, SNCF billed quarterly; payments more than thirty days late accrued interest of 1.5%. It even sent its last bill to DeGaulle after the liberation of France. Each person was permitted to bring one suitcase or package on the train. Once the victims were loaded onto the cars, SNCF employees took the cases, saying that they would be returned. Nothing was ever returned. There is no accounting of what was taken and no information publicly available on what happened to that property, since SNCF archives are still closed to the public. More than 600 victims and heirs from around the world filed a class-action law suit in September, 2000, seeking to hold SNCF liable for the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising out of the deportation of civilians--a violation of the Nuremberg principles. SNCF is one of the 500 largest corporations in the world and earns more than $100,000,000 annually in the U.S. alone. However, its shares are owned by the government and have been since 1938. SNCF has always argued that it is entitled to sovereign immunity in the U.S. It has never denied its actions; SNCF has simply taken the position that it cannot be sued in U.S. courts. The law that controls jurisdiction over sovereign governments and their agencies and instrumentalities is the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. …

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