by Shelby Vcelka

Impunity Watch Desk Reporter, Europe

PARIS, France–

Tuesday, applications opened for reparations to be paid by the French government for their involvement with deporting over 70,000 Jews during the Second World War. In December 2014, a deal between France and the United States was negotiated to make over $60 million available for survivors and their families. The deal was finalized and signed by the two governments on November 2nd, and is open internationally. Survivors could receive over $100,000 individually, while spouses and children of deceased survivors could receive tens of thousands of dollars. The amount to be paid to the estates of deceased survivors will depend on how long they lived after 1948, when France began paying reparations to its own citizens.

Leo Bretholz was one of the survivors who sought reparations from the French government for the deportation of Jews on French railways. Though Bretholz died in 2014, his estate is still eligible to receive compensation, as he escaped from a SCNF train when he was young. (Photo courtesy of Washington Post).

France’s ambassador in charge of Holocaust issues, Patrizianna Sparacino-Thiellay, noted after the signing on Monday that the negotiation was “a further contribution to recognizing France’s commitment to facing up to its historic responsibilities. The reparation programs set up immediately after the war, and those introduced in the past fifteen years, are the tangible symbol of the official acknowledgment in 1995 of France’s ‘imprescriptible debt’ towards the victims of the Holocaust.”

The reparations fund comes after the state of Maryland barred SCNF, a French railway company, from competing for state funded contracts. It was discovered during the subsequent legal battle that the SCNF was paid per head it transported to the Nazi concentration camps on its railway lines during World War II. Between 1942 and 1944, over 76,000 Jews were transported on the SCNF railway lines to the death camps. Only around 3,000 survived.

SCNF has maintained that they were a “cog in the Nazi extermination machine” and were under the control of Vichy France at the time the deportations occurred. The company has also stated that the government of France should be in charge of compensation, as they were just following orders. However, they are in the process of donating $4 million in the U.S., Israel, and France towards memorials and museums, highlighting the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Although the fund is being distributed through the U.S. government, any survivor or a survivor’s estate that was transported to a concentration camp on the French railways is eligible, regardless of nationality. The three-page application requires information regarding whether their loved one survived the war, and if known, the date, the convoy and the place of departure. Although the exact number of applicants is unknown, it is assumed that there are around 250 survivors still alive today. In addition to the $60 million, the French government has paid over $6 billion in reparations to its own citizens thus far.

For more information, please see

The Telegraph– France to pay $60m over Nazi rail deportations— 5 December 2014

CNN– France agrees to pay $60 million to those deported during Holocaust— 8 December 2014

Breitbart– French Assembly Votes to Give Holocaust Survivors Reparations— 25 June 2015

CBS– ​French to pay $60M in reparations to Holocaust survivors in U.S. and beyond— 3 November 2015

Washington Post– Holocaust survivors deported from France can now apply for reparations— 3 November 2015

Author: Impunity Watch Archive