The state-owned French railway company that hopes to supply Florida with high-speed trains launched a publicity campaign recently to help combat criticisms of its Nazi past. The campaign includes a web page titled "Heritage" that claims to detail the Societe Nationale des Chamins de fer Francais' connection with the Nazis.
But the page does little to explain what exactly the company did for the Adolf Hitler-approved Vichy government that ran parts of France during World War II. It also glosses over the company's connection to the trains it ran that transported some 70,000 Jews to
their deaths.
"Because we are new to America, many people are not
yet familiar with
SNCF," the site reads. "It is understandable that they may have
questions
about us and our history. In particular, questions have been raised
recently about the company during the World War II era, when Nazi
Germany invaded and occupied France.
"By August 1944, 76,000 Jewish men, women, and children had been sent by
train to the Jewish border." Not "were sent," and certainly not "we sent."
Unmentioned is the price per Jewish head paid to the railroad by the
German government. Instead, we learn of the 2,000 rail workers who met
their deaths because of their resistance of the Nazi regime. (The fact
that the executioners were often fellow rail workers goes unmentioned
too.)
Predictably, some Floridians were upset by the news that a
company with
so much blood on its tracks might do business in their state. Two months
ago, outgoing Congressman Ron Klein launched
a brief and pointless fight against the company's doing business in
Florida.
Ever since the NCSF
began making inroads into America -- last year, in California -- the
word reparation has been in the air, uttered recently and most
emotionally by Rosette Goldstein of Boca Raton, whose father rode an
NCSF
train to his death. NCSF has never offered reparations for the
Holocaust, arguing that, as a part of the French government, its
reparations are inseparable from those of France itself. Which is as
sensible as it is convenient.
NCSF's trains are arguably the
world's best. They are faster, cleaner, and safer than
anyone else's -- in more than 30 years of high-speed railing, they have
recorded not a single fatal accident. Their railroading expertise has
been retained by governments all over the world -- by Taiwan, by the U.K.,
by South Korea, by Spain. And by Israel.
