[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 183 (Tuesday, December 8, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2912]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




INTRODUCING LEGISLATION ADDRESSING WORLD WAR II AND THE DEPORTATION OF 
                 JEWS AND OTHERS TO CONCENTRATION CAMPS

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                        HON. CAROLYN B. MALONELY

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, December 8, 2009

  Mrs. MALONEY. Madam Speakers, I am pleased to join my colleagues 
Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Congressman Jerry Nadler in 
introducing bipartisan legislation that addresses a horrific period in 
world history: World War II and the deportation of millions of Jews and 
others to concentration camps. This bill would affect French railroad 
companies, which took more than 75,000 Jews from France to 
concentration camps during World War II, less than 3 percent of whom 
survived. Under current law, these foreign entities are immune from 
legal action. Specifically, the bill provides plaintiffs the right to 
seek damages against the French National Railway (Societe Nationale des 
Chemines Fers Francais--SNCF) in Federal Court for its transportation 
of French and other Jews to Auschwitz as well as its supply of 
personnel to facilitate the transportation and the assessed charges per 
person. The French Government claims immunity from legal action due to 
the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, yet the FSIA was passed 30 years 
after the action causing the damages for which the plaintiffs seek. The 
bill allows the plaintiffs to sue regardless of the strictures of the 
FSIA.
  Nothing will ever make up for the unthinkable atrocities undertaken 
by Nazi Germany and its sympathizers during World War II, but every bit 
of justice is important. No perpetrator or accomplice of the Holocaust 
should ever go unpunished. This bill allows some measure of closure for 
those who have suffered for far too long.

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