Jewish groups angry at Dutch railway over Holocaust reparations

AMSTERDAM — Jewish organizations criticize the Dutch national railway company for not adequately consulting them in discussions to work out a form of recognition for Holocaust victims the company transported to camps in the Netherlands during World War II — from where they were sent to Nazi concentration camps.

The anger comes after the railway company, NS, announced Friday that it would donate 5 million euros ($5.6 million) to four Dutch memorial centers as a gesture of collective recognition.

More than 100,000 Dutch Jews — 70 percent of the Jewish community — did not survive the war. Most were deported, along with Roma and Sinti, and killed in Nazi concentration camps.

Most of the Dutch victims were rounded up in cities and taken by train to camps in the Netherlands before being sent to the border and put on German trains to concentration camps.

Gideon Taylor, chair of Operations of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, calls the decision a major disappointment for Jewish groups.

“This was an opportunity to sit down with the Jewish community and survivors … to come to terms with a history that led to the death of over 100,000 people,” Taylor says in a telephone interview from New York.

“This is something to be dealt with in discussion, in consultation, in cooperation with representatives of victims and find a way to honor the memory of those who perished,” he adds.

— AP