Descendants of Holocaust victims this week filed a class-action US lawsuit against French state railway company the SNCF, accusing it of seizing property owned by tens of thousands of Jews, and others, sent to Nazi concentration camps.

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Plaintiffs claim that during WWII the SNCF confiscated and sold personal property belonging to deportees, including cash, securities, silver, gold, jewellery, works of art, musical instruments, clothing and equipment.

They also claim that the SNCF profited from the deportations by charging the German authorities for third-class train tickets for most of the 76,000 people – mostly Jews as well as other “undesirables” – who were packed into cattle trucks with no room to sit for days on end.

Many of the deportees did not survive the journey, and of those sent to the camps only 3 percent were still alive at the end of the war.

The suit was filed on Thursday, which was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in a US federal court in Chicago.

The primary plaintiff is Chicago resident Karen Scalin, whose grandparents were deported from France to Auschwitz in Poland, where they died in 1942.

Two other plaintiffs, Josiane Piquard and Roland Cherrier, are both French citizens living in France, whose relatives were also deported to Auschwitz where they were killed as part of Nazi Germany’s “final solution”.

"SNCF committed, conspired to commit and aided and abetted others who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity," the court document alleged. "Acting with full knowledge, SNCF was complicit in the commission of genocide."

The goods were "illegally, improperly and coercively taken from the ownership or control of an individual during the deportations," according to the suit.

In a landmark deal signed in December, France agreed to pay $60 million to the United States to be shared among American and foreign nationals deported to Nazi death camps on French trains during World War II.

“This deal was a good first step but too many people are excluded from it and its scope is too limited,” a lawyer for the plaintiffs told reporters. “But it doesn’t directly concern the SNCF, which we want to see held to account for its actions and to give adequate compensation.”

The plaintiffs claim that the US federal court has jurisdiction under international law, and that the statute of limitations (which restricts the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings may be initiated) does not apply because the SNCF only opened the relevant archives in 2012.

If successful, the case could open the door to "thousands more claims", the lawyer said.

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