Summary The suit was filed on Thursday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - 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.
Matter of justice
"Now is the time. It s time for SNCF to step up and take responsiblity," Blonder said.
"My hope is that this will be an impetus for SNCF to do the right thing... The population of Holocaust victims is dwindling, and there is a saying: justice delayed is justice denied."
The lead plaintiff in the case is Karen Scalin, a Chicago resident whose grandparents were sent from France on an SNCF train to Poland s Auschwitz concentration camp, where they died in November 1942.
The two other named plaintiffs, Josiane Piquard and Roland Cherrier, are both French citizens and residents whose relatives were deported to Auschwitz and died there during the war.
But Blonder said he has heard "from a thousand potential class members" and that the number of plaintiffs "could certainly go up."
The lawsuit alleges: "SNCF s unlawful and torturous conduct as described herein was done intentionally, maliciously and wantonly, and for the purpose of obtaining revenues for and maintaining the independence of SNCF."
"Plaintiffs are thereby entitled to an award of punitive damages as well as compensatory damages."
The lawsuit also speaks of a "mutually beneficial" relationship between the SNCF and the Nazis.
"The Nazis received the human fodder for their Final Solution, as well as the victims property, all through the collaboration of SNCF," it said.
The plaintiffs say the US federal court has jurisdiction over the matter because the claims arise under international law enforceable in the Chicago court as federal law.
The suit also claims that the statute of limitations has not expired, even though they took place nearly 75 years ago, because the SNCF only opened some of its archives to the public in 2012.
