Holocaust families sue French railway

[ConcernedCanuk]

.
.
.

Holocaust families sue French railway

Seek compensation for France's role in sending Jews to death camps
Aug. 30, 2006. 08:36 AM
STEVE RENNIE
STAFF REPORTER

A Thornhill family is one of more than a dozen from Canada planning to take France and its national railway company to court for helping the Nazis ship their relatives to death camps.

Paris-based lawyer Avi Bitton told the Star in a telephone interview yesterday that "about 15 Canadian families" will join between 250 and 300 other families from France, Belgium, Israel and the United States in seeking compensation from the French government and its rail company, Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français, for their part in the World War II deportations.

/snip/

A June 2006 administrative court ruling in Toulouse, France, set a precedent for the latest lawsuits, Bitton said.

That court ruled the French government and the rail company were liable for their role in the deportation of Jews during World War II. The court awarded 62,000 euros (about $88,000 Canadian) to French Green party politician Alain Lipietz, whose family members were taken to a transit camp north of Paris on a government-run train.

MORE

This could get interesting . . .

Could all those Iraqi families that lost loved ones sue the US for their deaths? - and the wounded?

That would be one MASSIVE class-action suit . . .

hmmmmm

[Ian David]

1. I sure hope the Iraqis can sue us. Make Halliburton pay. n/t

[bigworld]

2. That's reaching.

But that French government doesn't exist anymore. How can this have any basis?

[dipsydoodle]

4. I can't grasp

the basis either. Sounds extremely odd and I'm guessing it may get squashed on appeal by the government assuming they can do so. Their legal system doesn't quite run along the lines of the USA or UK. Would need someone French on here to explain. For one thing we both use Common Law and they use Roman Law.

[China_cat]

3. As if THAT government

unlike the one we find ourselves under, had any say or choice in the matter. Just like the Iraqis today, their government functions were controlled by the Nazis.

This is a really stupid suit. I feel for the victims, I really do, but sometimes you just have to let some things go. Their families still would have ended up dead. Hitler would just have had a death camp or 2 built in France.

[MrPrax]

5. But...

It is interesting that even though the families were NOT direct victims, they nonetheless want to be compensated?

Hmmm...wonder if this legal trick would go to pacify Americans who just recently posted their well-reasoned objections to reparation for their former slave population. Virtually all of the objections on that 'issue', including David Horowitz's objection, that the Original slaves are all dead and their 'families' don't have a claim against the living who had NOTHING to do with it.

Either the French courts are enlightened or corrupt...take your pick.

[davepc]

6. Didn't the postwar French government hunt down collaborators?

And kill and jail most of the ones they could get their hands on?

I don't get it.

The Vichy officials who ran the railroad in the 1940's already got punished for their complicity in the occupation.

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. officials may be punished, but the victims families remain uncompensated

.
.
.

hell,

PAY UP!

there can't be that many families left with close relatives that suffered in the holocaust

But there ARE tens of thousands of families that lost innocent loved ones at the hands of the US WarMachine since 2003 . . .

OH

and don't forget the massacre in the 1st gulf war -

"The Road of Death"

Where US air strikes slaughtered tens of thousands of Iraqi troops as they retreated to Baghdad from Kuwait.

ON THEIR OWN IRAQI SOIL!!!

they obviously had given up and were returning home
________________________________________________________________

"February 26th 1991 Iraq withdraws its forces from Kuwait. Iraqi tanks, armored vehicles, trucks and troops fleeing form huge queues on the main road north from Kuwait to the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Allied forces bomb them from the air, killing thousands of troops in what is quickly dubbed the "Road of Death". An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 Iraqis were killed during the ground war alone."

http://www.ireland.com/focus/iraq/road/timeline.htm
_________________________________________________________________

"We left at one, in the middle of the night," he said. "My division had 1,650 men. When we arrived in Basra at 10 in the morning, half the division had gone, killed. So many killed in such a small area, in such a short time."

As the people of Baghdad face up to the prospect of another war with the US, Iraqi veterans told the Guardian what it is like to be on the receiving end of allied firepower. They hope another generation of Iraqis does not suffer such a fate.

/snip/

"We were not prepared for an attack, because we were retreating. It was chaos."

The convoy was hit first by allied artillery, then by air raids, he said. "It seemed like a bomb was falling every eight seconds."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0508-06.htm

"They hope another generation of Iraqis does not suffer such a fate."

Well they just did - Bush 2 did even BETTER at genocide than Bush 1

Wait until all that Depleted Uranium takes full hold on your lands, water and bodies

Mai Lai encore - -

but much worse

So . .

Who are the REAL war criminals this century?

My neighbours to the south

(sigh)

[Bassic]

8. Yeah, make them pay for something they had to do at gunpoint.

This is ridiculous.

[schmuls]

9. I don't get it...the whole railway sysem couldn't have exactly said

no to the Nazis could they? I think this is over the top.

[ConcernedCanuk]

10. "saying no" requires intestinal fortitude - FEAR makes people submissive

.
.
.

Hitler knew that . .

And so do the PNACers

Bush is their puppet

But it's WORKING!

But in the long run it's not . . .

It will (sadly not in my lifetime) be another legacy of the "Rise and Fall of the ____________ Empire"

But more tens of millions will die at the hands of the US WarMachine before they fall . .

And fall they will

They will not be missed . . . .

[Nihil]

11. Talk about frivolous law suits?!

Yet another of these "No win, no fee" bloodsuckers who thinks they're
onto a winner because no-one dare oppose the dread word "Holocaust".

I feel sorry for the families who've been conned into going along with
this exercise in lawyer remuneration ... no doubt some will believe
that this is "just" and "deserved" but they should be introduced to
a dictionary that includes the word "gullible".

The June court ruling was a crock and this is the result.