The Nazis paid the national rail company for transporting Jews, Roma and members of the resistance to concentration camps during World War II, according to the report. The Belgian national railway company earned the equivalent of millions of dollars for deporting nearly 25,000 Jews and Roma, as well as forced laborers and members of the resistance, to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, a report has found. From 1942 to 1944, the Belgian railway sent 28 trains carrying 25,843 Jews and Roma people to Auschwitz; most were killed on arrival and only 1,195 survived, according to the report, which was compiled by a war research center attached to the State Archives of Belgium. Doing the bidding of the Nazis, the railway also sent more than 16,000 political prisoners to camps and prisons such as Buchenwald, the report found. It noted that the rail company had been paid 51 million Belgian francs for the transports, equivalent to several million dollars today. “The fact that the national railway company was responsible for the deportations of Jews and Roma and also other victim groups was something we already knew, but our knowledge was very superficial,” said Nico Wouters, the author of the report and the director of the war research center. “There was no in-depth investigation into the how or why, the context, or if there was any protest. We now have the full story.” The report was commissioned by Belgium’s Senate, the upper house of the country’s Parliament, in 2022. The findings were presented on Dec. 8.
via nytimes: Belgian Railway Earned Millions for Holocaust Trains, Report Finds