Washington--A lawsuit in Chicago by Holocaust descendants against France's national railway SNCF aims to fill gaps in a $60 million settlement reached in December, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said Friday.
The class-action suit seeks compensation for the confiscation and sale of personal property and for third-class train fares billed to the Nazis even though the victims were packed into cattle cars.
It comes four months after France agreed to pay $60 million to the United States to be shared among Americans and foreign nationals deported to Nazi death camps on French trains during World War II.
"That agreement is a good first step, but it excludes far too many people," Steven Blonder of the Chicago law firm Much Shelist Denenberg Ament told AFP by telephone.
"We are trying to hold SNCF accountable for its actions, and (the December agreement) does not do that... The gaps in that agreement were too big, and too many people are left with nothing."
The suit was filed on Thursday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in US federal court in Chicago.
"SNCF committed, conspired to commit and aided and abetted others who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity," it alleges.
"Acting with full knowledge, SNCF was complicit in the commission of genocide."
In a statement to AFP, SNCF said it "has no comment on the complaint in the United States and has no additional information to provide."
Personal property allegedly seized includes cash, securities, silver, gold, jewelry, works of art, musical instruments, clothing and equipment.
The goods were "illegally, improperly and coercively taken from the ownership or control of an individual during the deportations," the lawsuit claims.
AFP
