WASHINGTON – A GROUP of survivors and descendants of victims of the Holocaust are suing the Hungarian state railroad company in US court for its role in transporting Jews to the Auschwitz death camp.

The class action suit was filed Tuesday in a US district court in Chicago by attorneys representing the group of 95 plaintiffs. The suit, seen by AFP, seeks 1.24 billion (S$1.74 billion) in compensation and punitive damages.

According to the document, the Hungarian railroad company ‘knowingly provided the trains for delivering 437,000 Jews to their death in Auschwitz’ between March and October 1944. Railroad employees are accused of ‘looting the plaintiffs’ possessions, valuables, heirlooms, stock certificates, currency and jewelry from the plaintiffs’ luggage.

‘Without the trains provided by (the defendant), hundreds of thousands of Jews could not have been transported to Auschwitz,’ the suit charges.

The plaintiffs are asking for US$240 million for the stolen property and one billion dollars ‘as punitive damages reflecting the heinous and zealous participation by the defendants in genocide. ‘Even though discussion of money is necessarily crass in the context of the unspeakable evil that was inflicted upon the Holocaust victims, nevertheless the law is powerless to do anything other than to obtain financial restitution,’ it said.

According to the plaintiffs, by US law the Hungarian railroad company can be sued if it is ‘engaged in commercial activity in the United States. This final requirement is satisfied by the fact that the defendant sells tickets and passes for its railways through its agents in the United States,’ the document reads.

Member of Knesset Ze’ev Bielski is scheduled to tell the Knesset Finance Committee on Tuesday that his staff has succeeded in bringing Bank Leumi and the Committee to Return Holocaust Property to arbitration, which will speed up the dispute between them faster than through the courts.

The goal is to get money into the hands of the committee to relay to Holocaust survivors and their heirs. Bielski got involved in recognition that survivors are passing away daily. Arbitration is expected to take months instead of years.

The last remaining Polish victims of the transport trains that took millions to Nazi death camps have mounted a claim for compensation after learning that Germany’s state rail company is planning to run again on Polish rails.

Some 7,000 survivors, all pensioners, are calling for Deutsche Bahn to help to pay their medicine and care bills from the profits of the company’s expansion, which was made possible by the deregulation of rail competition across Europe from January 1.

Deutsche Bahn, which is owned by the German Government, is the successor to the wartime Reichsbahn, which charged its coerced passengers for their journeys to concentration camps — including Auschwitz.

The claim is a last effort by the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors to win payments from Germany after the Polish Government formally closed the issue of seeking compensation from Berlin in 2004.

“Deutsche Bahn wants to profit in our country,” said Stanislaw Zalewski, 85, head of the Polish Association of Former Political Prisoners of Hitler’s Prisons and Concentration Camps.

“We want them to hand over a sum for humanitarian aid for former prisoners and forced labourers,” the former inmate of Auschwitz added.

The call for compensation is being supported by Train of Commemoration, a German organisation dedicated to preserving the memory of the three million victims of Nazi deportations.

It estimates that Deutsche Reichsbahn made at least €445 million (£396 million) at today’s value by charging transportees from all over Europe. It said that its research showed that the price was raised for a trip to death camps such Auschwitz: “Deutsche Reichsbahn was a state-owned logistical system of the Nazi regime so every deportation was carried out by them. This is Deutsche Bahn’s heritage and its obligation.”

Deutsche Bahn’s website does not shy away from its predecessor company’s grim history. It states: “Deutsche Reichsbahn was involved directly in the Holocaust because it handled the deportation of numerous people. Without the railway, the systematic murder of the European Jews, Sinti and Roma would not have been possible. Some three million people from almost the whole of Europe were transported to the Nazi extermination camps.”It has so far refused to answer calls for compensation for the deportees, although it said it had supported a foundation set up by German industry to help forced labour victims.

A spokesman said: “Deutsche Bahn AG is not the legal successor of the Deutsche Reichsbahn. Nevertheless, Deutsche Bahn AG is fully aware of its historical responsibility. For that reason, it supports various projects within the ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ foundation and is also involved in other projects”.

Margot Kleinberger was deported in 1942, at 11, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. “Without the railway it would not have been possible,” she said. Herbert Shenkman, who was deported as a teenager, added: “This is not just about material compensation, but also the assumption of moral responsibility.”

The Company for Restitution of Holocaust Victims Assets, established by the state in 2005, has not been able to prevent some private firms and lawyers from unnecessarily mediating between the company and the Holocaust survivors in filing their claims and charging high fees, despite Justice Ministry regulations instituted this year.

Haaretz has learned of once such case, that of Na’ama, who asked that her last name not be used. She is a potential heir to property that belonged to relatives, two doctors who lived in Italy in the 1930s and who deposited money in the Anglo-Palestine Bank, later Bank Leumi.

The couple were murdered at Auschwitz and after the establishment of the state, the money in their account was transferred to the Custodian General in the Justice Ministry. The Company for Restitution of Holocaust Victims Assets located two brothers of the couple, in their 90s, who received NIS 40,000 each.

The couple were murdered at Auschwitz and after the establishment of the state, the money in their account was transfered to the Custodian General in the Justice Ministry. The Company for Restitution of Holocaust Victims Assets located two brothers of the couple, in their 90s, who received NIS 40,000 each.

However, the company then learned of a third brother, Na’ama’s father, who filed a claim through a lawyer working for a firm called Hahevra Hakalkalit Lehisachon, which was given power of attorney by Na’ama.

read more here.

OCTOBER 20, 2009

After holding money of Holocaust victims’ for 70 years, Israeli banks have begun returning the funds to the Holocaust Victims Assets Restitution Company.

The company said Tuesday that it would begin transferring to thousands of Holocaust victims’ descendants and Holocaust survivors the money held by banks Hapoalim and Discount and part of the assets held by Bank Leumi.

In the first stage, a total of 25 million shekels will be transferred, but in the coming months, the company said was expecting to return to the descendants and survivors over 400 million shekels set to be release by the banks.

read more here.