Holocaust Victims Sue Hungary Railway
(Bloomberg) -- A group of Holocaust victims, their survivors and heirs sued the Hungarian state railway, claiming it aided the Nazi extermination of Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The plaintiffs seek $240 million in compensatory damages, plus an additional $1 billion in punitive damages, from Hungarian State Railways, according to a complaint filed Feb. 9 in federal court in Chicago. More than 437,000 Hungarian Jews were transported on that nation’s railroads to the Auschwitz camp in Poland, according to the complaint. Railway operators were aware of the trains’ destination, according to the complaint. “It was using nearly all of its trains day and night to transport people, one-way, to Auschwitz,” according to the complaint. About 6 million European Jews were killed in the Holocaust during World War II in a Nazi campaign that included random executions, plunder and death camps. The German government last year presented Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a set of draft plans for the construction of the camp in southern Poland where more than 1 million people were killed. The plans were found in a Berlin apartment in 2008. The prime minister called the German gesture, the “gift of truth.” The lawsuit was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a U.S. law that allows victims of alleged abuses abroad to sue in federal court over violations of international law, according to the lawyers who filed the case. Railway’s Statement “Magyar Allamvasutak Zrt. was made aware of the lawsuit by the media,” the railway operator said today in an e-mailed statement, referring to the carrier by its Hungarian name. “The company and the government will formulate its position after receiving official notification,” the railway said. The plaintiffs’ complaint accuses the line, also known as MAV, of “aiding and abetting the Nazi genocide of 1944,” and of “looting the plaintiffs’ possessions, valuables, heirlooms stock certificates, currency and jewelry from the plaintiffs’ luggage.” The sum sought for compensatory damages represents the present day value of that property, according to the complaint. The requested $1 billion punitive damages award, “reflecting the heinous and zealous participation by the defendants in genocide,” would be split between the plaintiffs, who would get two-thirds of the total, and their attorneys, according to the complaint. The case is Victims of the Hungarian Holocaust v. Hungarian State Railways, 10-00868, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).
