Relatives of victims deported during Holocaust fight for compensation from SNCB

In 2014, France paid €50 million to victims who had been transported to death camps by SNCF trains during the Holocaust. The Netherlands followed suit in 2018, acknowledging its state-owned rail company’s role in delivering thousands of Jews to their deaths. 

Now, many are pushing for SNCB in Belgium to do the same. The railway apologised for its role in 2012, but many think it was not enough. 

Instead of risking economic losses and supply problems for not cooperating after the Germans occupied Belgium in 1940, SNCB chose to collaborate with them. Nearly 26,000 Jews from Belgium were deported from Mechelen to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps between 1942 and 1944. During this time, SNCB chartered 28 convoys to the camps. 

Narcisse Rulot, the director of SNCB at the time, was considered anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi. Campaigners say his complacency in allowing the German military to transport Jews via SNCB greatly aided in the suffering and deaths of thousands of people.

Now, decades later, descendants of these victims are pressing the railway to compensate them for its part in the deportations. However, they are having trouble establishing the SNCB’s responsibility. 

According to Nico Wouters, a historian and expert on the topic, the archives that would prove the railway’s part in the deportations are missing, most likely having been destroyed. 

SNCB says claims for compensation are a matter for the federal mobility minister, François Bellot. He is due to meet representatives from the Jewish community in Belgium shortly.

Photo: Angèle Olivier/Belga