Holocaust survivors receive reparations for deportations on French trains

More than seven decades after World War II ended, 49 Holocaust survivors are receiving $402,000 each from the French government in reparations for the French trains that deported them to Nazi concentration camps, the State Department said Wednesday.

Thirty-two spouses of deportees who died after the war will receive up to $100,500 each, officials said.

The payments fall under a 2014 U.S.-France agreement in which the French government offered $60 million in reparations for Holocaust deportations. In exchange, the U.S. government asked courts to dismiss any lawsuits against the French railway, known as SNCF, and the French government.

The agreement came after U.S. Holocaust survivors who had been transported to Nazi camps on French trains — usually with no food and a bucket for a toilet — objected when Keolis, a company affiliated with the French railway, began bidding on lucrative U.S. rail contracts. The State Department decided which claims merited payment under the agreement.