Railways were essential to carrying out the Holocaust ' decades later, corporate reckoning continues
Preeminent Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg underscored that almost everyone murdered at a camp arrived by train, including Jews, political prisoners and other 'undesirables.' Since the 1990s, groups of survivors have asked European railway companies to acknowledge and atone for their critical role ' a reminder that war, genocide and other atrocities cannot occur without corporate participation. One long-running attempt met a setback on Feb. 21, 2025, when the U.S. Supreme Court threw out an appeals court ruling in favor of survivors seeking atonement from Hungary's state railways. The lower court held that plaintiffs could sue the company over looting during the deportation of 440,000 Jews, most of whom were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Supreme Court disagreed, however, saying the case did not warrant an exception to law protecting foreign governments from being sued in U.S. courts. I wrote a book about one such case: the French national railways' multiple roles in World War...
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