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It's interesting to see Bernard Schlink's theme of guilt over multiple generations played out. Kudos to France. However, what irritated me about the article was:
Requisitioned by the Nazi regime in Germany, SNCF trains transported 76,000 Jews across France to the death camps from 1942 to 1944. About 3,000 survived, according to the rail company.
Many of these prisoners were POWs, partisans, homosexuals, gypsies, political prisoners, etc, that need be mentioned as well.
From reading the article, it looks to me that this is a payoff to avoid a shakedown by New York lawyers of the French national railway, SNCF, which has been promised, as part of a stipulation with the United States Federal Government that it will put a stop to the Jewish litigants making future claims for more money. American courts are known for making sweeping demands on foreign institutions and countries that would seem to be well outside their jurisdiction.... i'm wondering if the US should be making these demands though, when it has done nothing to make amends for its imprisonment of japanese immigrants during the same period
Well some will say that france as an occupied country was operating at gun point, but reality was france eagerly shipped these people off to their deaths
Maybe "reparations" isn't such a dirty word as the rightists would have us believe after all...
"France is to pay $60m (£39m) to mainly American victims of the Holocaust who were transported by train from France to Nazi death camps during the second world war.
The two countries issued a joint statement on Tuesday announcing the coming into force of a compensation agreement drafted in December 2014 after years of legal wrangling. The settlement creates a fund to compensate thousands of non-French citizens, their spouses or descendants who were not covered by a settlement programme that France put in place in 1946.
“The United States will administer and distribute this amount to eligible Americans, Israelis and other foreigners and their families who were not entitled to make claims under the existing French programme,” the statement by the State Department and the French foreign ministry said.... "
France to pay $60m into compensation fund for US victims of Holocaust | World news | The Guardian
Who was in charge for these operations back then?
Why do descendants deserve cash?
Well some will say that france as an occupied country was operating at gun point, but reality was france eagerly shipped these people off to their deaths
i'm wondering if the US should be making these demands though, when it has done nothing to make amends for its imprisonment of japanese immigrants during the same period
From reading the article, it looks to me that this is a payoff to avoid a shakedown by New York lawyers of the French national railway, SNCF, which has been promised, as part of a stipulation with the United States Federal Government that it will put a stop to the Jewish litigants making future claims for more money. American courts are known for making sweeping demands on foreign institutions and countries that would seem to be well outside their jurisdiction.
Probably a Frenchman that had a well fed job before during and after the war.
Why is he not blamed for the atrocities? What does France has anything to do with this? The country was taken over from Hitler, was it not?
Well some will say that france as an occupied country was operating at gun point, but reality was france eagerly shipped these people off to their deaths
i'm wondering if the US should be making these demands though, when it has done nothing to make amends for its imprisonment of japanese immigrants during the same period
It is like that Ukrainian that they prosecuted in Germany a few years ago. Those Frenchman did bad things.
Still unclear, can you elaborate please?
What Ukrainian that was prosecuted in Deutchland few years ago? And what does that incident has to do with the current France paying the price of Deutch-French country under Hitler during WW2?
Well, the Frenchmen responsible for rounding up (foreign in this case) Jews and putting them in trains to labor or termination camps depending on body fitness and age would be the first in line to mention. And then there was most probably a French Eichmann responsible for managing the Pünktlichkeit of delivery by train. But in general, everyone pitched in to do her job and pay the tax to buy the guns to shoot the Russians and Americans. The only question is, how much coercion is required to justify participation in mass murder? How much would you say.
And then there might also be a second quandary in the compensation. How much is say 3 years starving in a labor camp watching 90 percent of your friends die worth in financial terms? The French paid $ 60.000.000 and there are only 76 thousand, I think I remember, to compensate? Maybe we should not be to exact and calculate the cash per hour on a discounted value, but that sounds like cheap to me.
The second paragraph is besides the point (but interesting question nevertheless).
My point was: Why is the France that was liberated with the help of allies paying for the deeds done from the occupied by Hitler France? Is this why allies help a country? So as to have it pay for its former evil people in charge that the current France had neither control nor descends from?
Because it was Frenchmen that rounded up and turned the Jews over to the Germans for pay or privilege. They should have lost all their worldly possessions for that, don't you think?
I do not agree and the reason is over-generalization.
I differentiate between Allied-Frenchmen and Hitler-Frenchmen. The former beat and has nothing to pay for the ills that the later acted upon. The current Frenchmen whom predominantly descent from Allied-Frenchmen have even less to do with Hitler-Frenchmen because of generation gap, and are paying unreasonably a fee that their Hitler-Frenchmen committed.
The French had a government and a population. That government and population as a whole supported the German war effort with the exception of the resistance. One of the ways they did so, was to deliver the Jews to their slaughter. Factually they participated in mass murder and the war against the allies. That is very bad.
I really do not see your argument that this was all okay. And as for the current Frenchmen, they are responsible as they profited by inheritance.
What percentage were the Resistance and what were pro-Deutch?
Also, if the inheritance belongs to the people they shipped to their doom then yes the inheritance should be returned. But what does the current French government has to do with it?
Oh. When they were shipped, there was no inheritance left.
And as for the current Frenchmen, they are responsible as they profited by inheritance.
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