Report rejects calls for Belgium Holocaust compensation over role in death camp deportations

Almost six years ago, the country’s parliament passed a resolution calling for an independent investigation into the SNCB’s role in deporting over 25,000 Jews and more than 350 Roma on 28 convoys from Mechelen to extermination camps during the Holocaust. Most of the deportees were murdered on arrival.

“To reject compensation from the perpetrator to the victim denies the moral obligation by SNCB to those it wronged; instead it would allow the railroad to dilute and evade the necessity of taking any current action by permitting it to spread the blame widely across Belgian society," the WJRO statement said.

The organisation claimed that the recommendations from the report, presented to the government on January 17, “offered an important opportunity to confront the historical injustices suffered by Holocaust survivors and their families,” yet failed to do so. It also noted that the ruling contrasted with precedent of such payments in both France and the Netherlands.

“We urge the government to act quickly to ensure that the railway provides compensation to those who suffered and their heirs,” the WJRO statement continued.

However, the president of the WJRO, Gideon Taylor, told JNS that he expects that the new Belgian government may still support a compensation scheme despite the recommendations of the report.