France's rail agency wins appeal in deportees' suit

BORDEAUX, France - An appeals court yesterday overturned a ruling that France's railway authority should compensate the family of World War II deportees, including several from the Philadelphia area.

European Green Party lawmaker Alain Lipietz, his sister, Helene, and other family members brought a suit on behalf of four of their relatives taken to a Nazi transit camp at Drancy near Paris in May 1944.

The four were transported in cattle cars by the SNCF from southwest France to Drancy and remained there for several months until the camp was freed in July 1944, according to the lawsuit. Drancy was a stopover point for Jews deported to Nazi death camps including Auschwitz.

In June the administrative court in Toulouse ordered the state and the SNCF rail authority to pay $82,000 for their role in World War II deportations. The SNCF appealed the decision.

The appeals court in Bordeaux annulled the ruling against the SNCF because the case did not fall within the Toulouse court's jurisdiction.

The original ruling in June had been the first of its kind.

The appeals court also indicated that the SNCF was not responsible because it was acting under orders.

"The makeup of the trains, their fitting out and the way in which the wagons were closed were determined by the occupier and put into practice by the authority of the state," the ruling said.

Michel Jeruchim, 69, of Paoli, is one of more than 100 Americans who have joined the suit.

Jeruchim was 5 when he last saw his parents just before they were taken away on the French railway to Auschwitz. Yesterday, he said he had not yet heard of the decision from his lawyers.

Gunther Kirchheimer of Huntingdon Valley also lost his parents in the roundup.

"We never had a chance to say goodbye," Kirchheimer, 74, a retired building maintenance worker, told The Inquirer in January. "That's something I live with every day."

Read more about the survivors who filed suit via http://go.philly.com/nazirail EndText