Belgian railways made millions from Holocaust trains, report shows

Belgium’s national railway company earned the equivalent of millions of dollars for deporting nearly 25,000 Jews and Roma, as well as forced laborers and members of the resistance, to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, a report has found.

From 1942 to 1944, the Belgian railways sent 28 trains with 25,843 Jews and Roma to Auschwitz; most were killed on arrival and only 1,195 survived, according to the report, which was compiled by a war research center affiliated with the State Archives of Belgium.

At the request of the Nazis, the railroad also sent more than 16,000 political prisoners to camps and prisons such as Buchenwald, the report found. It noted that the railway company had received 51 million Belgian francs for the transports, which amounts to several million dollars today.

“We already knew that the National Railway Company was responsible for the deportations of Jews and Roma and other victim groups, but our knowledge was very superficial,” says Nico Wouters, the author of the report and director of the National Railways. war research center. “No in-depth research has been done into the how and why, the context and whether there was a protest. We now have the full story.”

The report was commissioned in 2022 by the Belgian Senate, the upper house of the country’s parliament. The findings were presented on December 8.

The railway, known by its French initials NMBS, was founded in 1926. It functioned as a “semi-governmental” autonomous company, although its main customer was the Belgian state. During the Second World War it continued to operate autonomously while Belgium was occupied by the Nazis.

In a written statement, the company said: “NMBS has always fully ensured that all light can be shed on the role of the Belgian railways in the deportations at the time.” The railway company “will now take note of and follow up on the investigation,” the company added, although it did not immediately say what further action might be taken.

A spokesperson for NMBS, Dimitri Temmerman, said the company first handed over historical data to the war research center in 2003, after the Senate requested an investigation into the role of Belgian authorities in the persecution of Jews during the German occupation.

The resulting report, issued in 2007 and entitled ‘La Belgique Docile’ or ‘Willing Belgium’, found that government agencies were more complicit with the occupying Nazis than previously thought. But that report contained only one chapter on the role of the national railways in the deportations.

Mr Wouters indicated that the new report focuses on the railway company. “Now that we have seen all the sources, we understand the financial aspects and there is no longer any ambiguity or doubt about responsibility,” he said. “I think this could be a turning point because the facts can no longer be ignored by policymakers and the railway company itself.”

Mr Wouters says that he has investigated the “special trains” that ran outside the regular Belgian transport network and that were used specifically for Nazi purposes. These included 28 deportation trains, as well as trains used by high-ranking Nazi officials as they traveled through Belgium.

The report found no evidence of protests by Belgian railway workers against the trains used for deportations.

“No one asked the question: should we do this or is this morally or legally acceptable?” said Mr Wouters. “It was never discussed in the board of directors. There really is a general feeling that the deportation trains were inevitable. No one asks questions, and there is no protest, no complaints.”

Belgium is one of the few Western European countries that have tried to come to terms with the role their national railways played in the mass deportations for the Nazis during World War II.

In 2011, the French state railway formally apologized to the victims of the Holocaust for its role in the deportation of some 76,000 European Jews to the French-German border in 76 cattle cars, from 1941 to 1944. From the border they were usually transported to Nazi camps in German. occupied territories, where they were killed.

The French apology came after years of litigation by American Holocaust survivors and their descendants. In 2014, France gave the United States $60 million in reparations to be distributed to the victims and their heirs.

The Dutch National Railways has also acknowledged its role in transporting Jews and Roma to their deaths. In 2019, she promised to set aside tens of millions of euros to compensate the victims and their direct descendants.

Research from 2012 showed that between June 1942 and August 1944, 112 Dutch trains traveled from the Netherlands to nine Nazi camps in Germany, Austria and Poland, among others.

Gideon Taylor, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, which advocates compensation for Holocaust victims, said the Belgian report was part of a larger effort by Western European governments to reckon with a dark history.

“The fact that it was done on behalf of Parliament is very important,” Mr Taylor said. “It is a sign that Belgium wants to tackle this.”

“The trains are a very powerful symbol of the Holocaust,” he added. “Understanding what happened to the train companies gives us a perspective that goes beyond just numbers of people and facts. That makes transparency about their role very important.”