A French Jew asked a court Wednesday to order the state-run railway to pay him one euro - a symbolic reparation for its alleged assistance in deporting his parents and others to World War II death camps.
Kurt Schaechter, 82, wants the SNCF, as the train authority is known, to take responsibility for its role in the Nazi-ordered deportation of Jews on French trains to the camps, his lawyer told the court.
The parents of Schaechter were deported in the summer of 1942 to camps in Sobibor and Auschwitz. He never saw his parents again. After researching the SNCF, he took the matter to court as a ``duty of memory,'' said attorney Joseph Roubache.
SNCF president Louis Gallois denied that the train authority bears any responsibility.
``The SNCF worked under the orders of French authorities and the (German) Occupation in a situation where its capacity for autonomy was nothing or quasi nothing,'' Gallois told a news conference.
``The SNCF does not have to excuse itself for acts imposed on it,'' he said.
The court is only expected to rule on an SNCF argument that too much time had elapsed to take legal action, with a decision expected May 14. New hearings are to be set only if the court rules in favor of Schaechter.