Legacy of the Holocaust: US can't have proper trains

dutchfire

dutchfire

Deity
Retired Moderator
Joined
Jan 5, 2006
Messages
14,106
Location
-
http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/7/54...legacy-threatens-sncf-france-us-rail-projects
A major French railway company has come under renewed scrutiny in the US over its ties to the Holocaust, and billions of dollars are at stake. The state-owned Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français (SNCF) shipped thousands of Jews to death camps during the Second World War, when France was occupied by German Nazi troops. The company formally apologized in 2011, saying it acted under coercion from the Nazis, but Holocaust survivors in the US are demanding reparations, and lawmakers have sprung into action
Click to expand...
Thoughts?
 
This is why socialism is evil. If Nazi Germany had a free market, there would have been no holocaust...
 
MY first thought is that it's jst a pretext for protectionism. Someone doesn't want a French company to ge he deal and is using the Holocaust. There are lots of companies that were complicit in the Holocaust or made military hardware for the Nazis and not all of them were in Germany or German occupied territory either.
 
First off, I'm not sure the Purple Line is a proper train, but that's not really the topic (although I do think this topic might be more Off Topic than History).

It's got bad optics. Regardless of their motives, they were directly complicit (I would imagine Volkswagen, for example, wasn't directly connected). I have no doubt there was some degree of duress, but they were more on the side of get sabotaged by the resistance than doing the sabotaging themselves.
 
GoodSarmatian said:
MY first thought is that it's jst a pretext for protectionism. Someone doesn't want a French company to ge he deal and is using the Holocaust. There are lots of companies that were complicit in the Holocaust or made military hardware for the Nazis and not all of them were in Germany or German occupied territory either.
Click to expand...
boycott the ford motor company
 
GoodSarmatian said:
MY first thought is that it's jst a pretext for protectionism. Someone doesn't want a French company to ge he deal and is using the Holocaust. There are lots of companies that were complicit in the Holocaust or made military hardware for the Nazis and not all of them were in Germany or German occupied territory either.
Click to expand...

Of course this is correct, no question.
 
GoodSarmatian said:
MY first thought is that it's jst a pretext for protectionism. Someone doesn't want a French company to ge he deal and is using the Holocaust. There are lots of companies that were complicit in the Holocaust or made military hardware for the Nazis and not all of them were in Germany or German occupied territory either.
Click to expand...

Considering that several German chemical and automobile companies operate in the US and did exactly as you describe, the protectionism theory holds a lot of weight.
 
Well, keep in mind that we're talking about a specific legislator for the state of Maryland, so businesses that operate in the United States that aren't doing business with the state of Maryland aren't really relevant. I'm not saying it isn't protectionism, just to keep that in mind.

Anyway, here's an update. I wouldn't read too much into the legislator's comments because they don't really make much sense, but it does show that this Maryland bill isn't getting passed:

The sponsor of a bill that Maryland officials say would jeopardize federal money for a light-rail Purple Line by requiring one of the project’s bidders to pay Holocaust reparations said Tuesday he would not put the funding at risk.
Click to expand...

Maryland transportation officials said the bill would violate Federal Transit Administration procurement rules against imposing conditions on a single bidder.

“This would likely place federal funding for the Purple Line in jeopardy,” said Beth Nachreiner, an assistant secretary for the Maryland Department of Transportation. “The Purple Line cannot go forward without federal funding, and if this bill were to pass, the Purple Line possibly could not.”
Click to expand...

He also tried this in 2011. That time, Keolis did not get the bid, although clearly, if the goal was to get them to pay reparations, it did not succeed:

James Knighton, the Maryland Transit Administration’s director of government affairs, told the legislative committee that a 2011 Maryland law targeting Keolis’s bid on a MARC commuter rail contract also would have violated federal procurement rules. However, he said, that contract went forward because the state was able to pay it all with state money. Keolis lost that contract to operate MARC’s Camden and Brunswick lines to a lower bidder.
Click to expand...
 
Antilogic said:
Considering that several German chemical and automobile companies operate in the US and did exactly as you describe, the protectionism theory holds a lot of weight.
Click to expand...
and yet Ford remains entrenched in its slum kingdom, free to destroy the hopes of Detroit sports fans every year
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

nonconformist
Article: The Greatest Betrayal: France's collaboration in WWII [Now, also in French!]
2
Replies
25
Views
19K
Japsnap
Japsnap
Top Bottom