Bidders for Californian high-speed rail may have their past raked over
LAWMAKERS in California voted unanimously on June 29th to approve a proposed law which would force any company bidding for contracts to build the state’s new $43 billion high-speed rail system to disclose whether they transported Jews, American soldiers or others to concentration camps during the Holocaust. Its author, Bob Blumenfield, a Democrat, specifically highlighted the wartime record of SNCF, which nowadays operates France’s TGV high-speed trains. The French firm expects that the bill will clear all further legislative hurdles, including the sign-off by the normally veto-prone governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Providing the details required by the law will be fairly easy for SNCF. Facing questions about its record, it commissioned a study in 1992 on how it deported Jews en route to Nazi death camps. The report described how it carried out the Vichy government’s orders with no protest or resistance except for isolated acts by individual railwaymen, and took payment for the shipments. The firm will also have to state that despite a series of lawsuits it avoided paying compensation for its acts: it successfully argued that it was under the orders of the French government and German occupiers. …
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