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Holocaust group faults VRE contract
By Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 7, 2010; B01
Some Holocaust survivors are criticizing Virginia Railway Express for awarding an $85 million contract to operate and maintain its trains to a company partly owned by the French railway that transported people to Nazi concentration camps.
The company, Keolis Rail Services America, also has submitted a bid to the Maryland Transit Administration to operate the MARC Brunswick and Camden lines now under CSX control, a Keolis official said. The five-year contract is pending, a MARC spokesman said.
A group of 269 American Holocaust survivors objects to Keolis and its majority owner, the French railway company SNCF, seeking public rail service contracts across the country, said Dale Leibach of Washington-based Prism Public Affairs, which he said is doing pro bono public relations for the group. SNCF, which has been partly owned by the French government since 1938, transported nearly 77,000 Jews and other Holocaust victims from France to Nazi camps, according to historians.
Leibach said the group wants SNCF to describe, and apologize for, its role in the Holocaust and pay reparations to survivors and victims' families before it or any of its subsidiaries receive U.S. government contracts. The group formed in 2000 via word of mouth as part of a class-action lawsuit filed against SNCF in New York. The lawsuit, which was refiled in 2006 and is pending, seeks reparations for property taken from Holocaust victims when they boarded SNCF trains.
VRE is the first U.S. rail system Keolis would operate, but the company is seeking to run commuter rail systems in California, in addition to the two MARC lines, according to Steve Townsend, president of Keolis Rail Services Virginia.
Townsend said he has never heard complaints that Keolis, which was founded in the late 1990s, is too closely connected to the Holocaust via SNCF.
... click the link if you actually want to read more
By Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 7, 2010; B01
Some Holocaust survivors are criticizing Virginia Railway Express for awarding an $85 million contract to operate and maintain its trains to a company partly owned by the French railway that transported people to Nazi concentration camps.
The company, Keolis Rail Services America, also has submitted a bid to the Maryland Transit Administration to operate the MARC Brunswick and Camden lines now under CSX control, a Keolis official said. The five-year contract is pending, a MARC spokesman said.
A group of 269 American Holocaust survivors objects to Keolis and its majority owner, the French railway company SNCF, seeking public rail service contracts across the country, said Dale Leibach of Washington-based Prism Public Affairs, which he said is doing pro bono public relations for the group. SNCF, which has been partly owned by the French government since 1938, transported nearly 77,000 Jews and other Holocaust victims from France to Nazi camps, according to historians.
Leibach said the group wants SNCF to describe, and apologize for, its role in the Holocaust and pay reparations to survivors and victims' families before it or any of its subsidiaries receive U.S. government contracts. The group formed in 2000 via word of mouth as part of a class-action lawsuit filed against SNCF in New York. The lawsuit, which was refiled in 2006 and is pending, seeks reparations for property taken from Holocaust victims when they boarded SNCF trains.
VRE is the first U.S. rail system Keolis would operate, but the company is seeking to run commuter rail systems in California, in addition to the two MARC lines, according to Steve Townsend, president of Keolis Rail Services Virginia.
Townsend said he has never heard complaints that Keolis, which was founded in the late 1990s, is too closely connected to the Holocaust via SNCF.
... click the link if you actually want to read more
the company is PARTLY OWNED by another company that SIXTY-FIVE YEARS AGO was run by Vichy France
What's next, boycotting every company that existed in Nazi Germany in the 1940s?
you're an idiot if you really believe that AS
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