Demand for Reimbursement
THESSALONIKI The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki and the "Train of Commemoration" are demanding that the receipts extorted from Greece during the anti-Semitic deportations of the "Reichsbahn" be reimbursed. german-foreign-policy.com documents their joint letter addressed to the Board of Management of the Deutsche Bahn AG.
April 2015
RE: Deutsche Bahn’s responsibility to repay 89 Million Euros to Thessaloniki Jewish Victims
Dear Sirs,
On behalf of the NGO "Zug der Erinnerung e.V." ("Train of Commemoration") and the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki we are approaching "Deutsche Bahn AG", the historical successor of the of "Deutsche Reichsbahn", in our demand to reimburse to heirs of Greek Holocaust victims of Thessaloniki for train fares that they were forced to pay for their deportation from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Treblinka between March and August 1943.
According to an expertise established on behalf of the NGO "Train of Commemoration", the "Deutsche Reichsbahn" charged the Greek Jewish population for their mass deportation to Auschwitz, what today is equivalent to more than 75 million Euros. This amount has never been reimbursed to the murder victims. The "Deutsche Bahn AG" and its owner, the Federal Republic of Germany, are liable for these millions in debts.
According to our calculations, more than 48,000 deportees from the city of Thessaloniki, alone, had been forced to pay the equivalent of 64 million Euros in train fares. Their abduction had been carried out between March and August 1943. In a major logistical operation, the accomplices to these murders, the "Deutsche Reichsbahn", had assembled 19 transports of around 30 sealed freight cars. In the freight cars more than 12,000 children and youth went to their death with "Deutsche Reichsbahn". Upon arrival at Auschwitz, the abductees were sent directly to the gas chambers and murdered, with but few escaping this predicament, because they were needed as slave labor. ...
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