in Belgium, a parliamentary report reveals the collaboration of the national railway company in the deportation of Jews

During the Occupation, the Belgian National Railway Company was paid 51 million Belgian francs for transporting deportees to Germany. This is the conclusion coming from a new investigative report commissioned by the Belgian Senate.

For more than two years, the authors of the report delved into the very fragmented and incomplete archive funds. Historians describe in a report, commissioned by the Belgian Senate, both the passivity and blindness of the management of the Belgian National Railway Company (SNCB) during the German Occupation, but also in part the difficulty of oppose the occupier.

The main revelation of this report is that the SNCB was indeed paid by the German occupiers to deport Jews, gypsies, forced laborers and political prisoners during the Second World War. This role during the occupation was already more or less known among our neighbors, but it had never been the subject of such in-depth research.

During the Occupation, 28 railway “convoys” left Belgium for Germany. On board, 25,490 Jews and 353 Gypsies were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 5% of them will survive. “We were able to confirm that SNCB was paid almost 51 million Belgian francs”explains historian Nico Wouters, of the Center for War and Society Studies, was in charge of this investigative report.

“It’s something terrible”

From the start, SNCB agreed to cooperate with the occupier to be able to continue to ensure supplies to the population. But the original problem, according to historian Nico Wouters, is that no agreement was signed between the SNCB and the German occupier. There are no defined limits to their collaboration. Gradually, the Belgian railways agreed to set up military transport for the benefit of Germany. From then on, it’s gearing. “There is no control over what is on the trainexplains historian Nico Wouters. In the summer of 1942, when the Jewish deportation trains began to run, the SNCB had already accepted that the company would be obliged to operate military trains. And so there isn’t even a decision-making process. It’s very difficult for us to imagine that even today.”

“Every day there are hundreds of trains traveling to Germany. For the company, the deportation trains are simply a very small part of the military trains.”

Nico Wouters, historian

at franceinfo

The movement of these trains leading to death was therefore not even part of the discussions in the board of directors in a mixture of ignorance, blindness and indecision. “When you see that we paid to deport my uncle who was 16 years old to send him to Auschwitz where he died upon arrival, it’s something terribletestifies Philippe Markiewicz, president of the Central Israelite Consistory of Belgium. What happened is absolutely dramatic. And so the work that has been done regarding the role of SNCB is interesting and particularly useful for the future.”

The question of reparations now arises. The Belgian government will set up a committee of wise people to think about it. He hopes for proposals from the end of 2024 to ensure his duty of memory.