Nazi victims demand comp from D-Bahn

15th January 2010

© PS Reichsbahn earned millions transporting victims of nazism Share:

Plans by the German national rail operator to enter the Polish market have hit an unexpected snag from groups representing Nazi victims.

The groups want to get compensation from Deutsche Bahn, which is due to start operating services on Polish railways this year, claiming that as the successor to the Nazi-era Reichsbahn the company should donate some money as a “goodwill gesture”.

Thousands upon thousands of Poles were transported by rail during the war, often in atrocious conditions.

“Deutsche Bahn's plans to enter the Polish market is ... an important event economically and surely makes rail clients happy,” said Stanislaw Zalewski, head of an association for former prisoners. “But it also awakens certain emotions in those who lived through the horrors of World War II.

“We're convinced that Deutsche Bahn will take advantage of this situation and prove that it remembers the victims of Nazism,” he added. “We count on this as a gesture of goodwill. It would be good to create a fund of humanitarian aid.”

Hans-Rudiger Minow, spokesman for Train of Commemoration, a German association which investigates and commemorates the role German railways played in the Nazi terror said Deutsche Bahn had the right to enter the Polish market, but “to profit, you must first pay off debts and responsibilities.”

“In Germany, there really isn't a station through which the victims of the Third Reich didn't pass,” Mr Minow said. “We also noted the Reich's German rail took part in the massive murder in an active and indispensable way.”

Experts have calculated that Reichsbahn earned, in modern terms, EUR 445m from the transport of Poles during the war. One example given on the Train of Commemoration website cites the railway company earning as much as EUR 4m alone from taking those classified as suffering from a “congenital illness” to the death camps.

Along with transporting people the company was also one of the biggest employers of slave labour.

Dariusz Pawlos, chairman of the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation, estimates that as many as 100,000 surviving Poles might be interested in compensation to help with medical bills and care costs.

State owned Deutsche Bahn has argued that it is a separate entity from Reichsbahn and not its successor. In 1999 it also contributed to a fund organised by German industry to compensate victims of Nazi terror.

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