Jewish foundation sues Belgium over Nazi rail deportations to Auschwitz

The foundation has indicated that if the Belgian government and SNCB demonstrate willingness to negotiate in good faith regarding compensation, the legal process will be suspended in favor of settlement discussions.

By Gila Isaacson, Kikar Hashabbat via JFeed

A Jewish organization in Belgium is set to sue the country’s government and national rail operator, SNCB, for Holocaust-era collaboration, with the Nico Gunzburg Foundation taking legal action over cooperation with the Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

The suit cites 28 trains, most of which were directly Auschwitz-bound, that departed from the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen, a city sitting between Brussels and Antwerp, between August 1942 and July 1944.

The passengers of those trains included roughly 25,000 Jews and several hundred Roma and Sinti, with only a few thousand of the deportees surviving.

According to multiple sources covering the case, historian Nico Wouters’s research shows that the NMBS/SNCB received nearly 51 million Belgian francs (equivalent, after adjusting for inflation, to nearly 15 million euros) from the German occupiers to operate the deportation trains.

Per the Nico Gunzburg Foundation, historian Nico Wouters discovered that SNCB was bribed to cooperate with the Nazis in facilitating the deportations.

The Belgian state is also being held responsible as a shareholder in the SNCB. The foundation’s suit seeks both monetary compensation and formal acknowledgment of responsibility for the deportations.

According to reports from the Jewish Chronicle and Belga News Agency, negotiations between the foundation and Belgian authorities have already taken place but have yielded no results to date.

The foundation has indicated that if the Belgian government and SNCB demonstrate willingness to negotiate in good faith regarding compensation, the legal process will be suspended in favor of settlement discussions.

Belgium is not the first nation to face such accountability. In 2019, a special commission ruled that the Dutch Railways (NS) must compensate Holocaust survivors, and some 5,000 to 6,000 people received reparations ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 euros, the result of a years-long legal battle.

The French railway company SNCF deported approximately 76,000 Jews and has engaged in reparations processes as well.

Before the Second World War, 50,000 Jews resided in Belgium. Roughly half were murdered during the Holocaust.

The Belgian state previously acknowledged its role in perpetrating the Holocaust within Belgium, with then-Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt formally apologizing for and acknowledging the role that the Belgian state played in carrying out the Final Solution in 2007.

The Nico Gunzburg Foundation’s legal action reflects an urgent effort to secure justice while survivors remain alive.

According to observers of Holocaust restitution efforts, the annual mortality rate among aging survivors underscores the time-sensitive nature of such claims.