Report: Nazi victims to seek compensation from German railway

WARSAW - Polish victims of the Nazi Third Reich will seek compensation from Germany's railway Deutsche Bahn, claiming it profited from transporting prisoners to death camps during World War II, the head of an organization for former prisoners said yesterday.

Two of the largest organizations representing Nazi victims will appeal to Deutsche Bahn for financial aid for Nazi victims, Stanislaw Zalewski, head of an association for former prisoners, told the German Press Agency dpa.

"Deutsche Bahn wants to profit in our country [by entering the Polish market]," Zalewski told the daily Rzeczpospolita. "But they made a lot of profit during the occupation of Poland ... We want them to hand over a sum for humanitarian aid for former prisoners and forced laborers."

The groups argue that Deutsche Bahn was created from profits made by Reichsbahn, its war-time predecessor. The German organization "The Train of Commemoration" estimates that the Reichsbahn earned today's equivalent of half a billion euros (700 million dollars) by transporting Polish prisoners to camps, often in crowded and inhumane conditions, the daily said.

The members are not counting on big payouts, Zalewski said, but want money for "medical care, to pay heating bills or other needs." The associations of former concentration camp prisoners have some 7,000 members, down from 25,000 members in 1995. Zalewski, 85, a former prisoner of Auschwitz-Birkenau, is head of the Polish Association of Former Political Prisoners of Hitler Prisons and Concentration Camps. ()