U.S. doles out reparations from France to Holocaust survivors

WASHINGTON — The State Department has paid or approved 90 claims for a total $11 million in reparations from France to former World War II prisoners who were carried to Nazi death camps in French trains — the first French reparations paid to Holocaust survivors living in the United States, officials said Thursday.

The payments apply to Holocaust survivors who were deported from France to concentration camps on stifling trains operated by the state-owned French railway, SNCF, or, if the survivors have died, to their spouses or heirs.

It is the first French compensation to Holocaust survivors who settled in the U.S. as well as Israel, Canada and other countries that haven’t had a reparations agreement with France.

It’s also the first World War II reparations program to include heirs considered to be “standing in the shoes” of people who died before receiving compensation for the atrocities they or their spouses endured, State Department officials said.

“In many ways, this is belated justice for the worst crimes in history,” said Stuart Eizenstat, the State Department’s special adviser for Holocaust issues. “But it also underscores a long relationship with France.”

SNCF was paid to transport 76,000 Jews and other prisoners, usually with no food and only a bucket for a toilet, to Nazi camps. All but about 2,000 were killed.

While the French government has paid more than $6 billion in Holocaust reparations since 1948, including to deportees, those payments previously covered only French citizens and those of four countries that had bilateral agreements with France.

More than 700 claims have been filed under a 2014 agreement between the U.S. and France in which the French government pledged a total $60 million for the deportations carried out by SNCF, officials said. In exchange, the U.S. government agreed to ask courts to dismiss any U.S. lawsuits against SNCF or the French government.

Harriet Tamen, a New York lawyer representing more than 1,000 international Holocaust survivors in a lawsuit against SNCF, said the agreement provided no reparations for people who lost both parents in Nazi camps.