The French rail company SNCF was paid by the Nazis to transport 76,000 people to their deaths. I survived by jumping off one of those trains. Sign my petition to stop SCNF from doing business in the US until it pays reparations to Holocaust survivors.
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In 1942, after years of hiding from the Nazis because I am a Jew, I was put on a train bound for Auschwitz. There were 1,000 people on the train, crammed together, terrified. I did the only thing I could think to do: I found a way to jump off and escape. I later found out that of the thousand people on that train, only five survived the Holocaust.
That train was part of SNCF, the French railway company that transported 76,000 people — including 11,000 children and many American pilots shot down in France — toward Nazi death camps. SNCF was paid by the Nazis per person, and per kilometer. Sometimes I wonder whether SNCF was paid for my partial journey, or if they would have been paid more if I’d made it all the way to Auschwitz.
Unlike other companies that worked for the Nazis, SNCF has never paid a cent of reparations to Holocaust survivors.
SNCF and its American subsidiary Keolis are bidding to do business in America, the country where I finally found my freedom. Even as SNCF and Keolis compete for lucrative public contracts – many funded by my tax dollars and those of other survivors sent on SNCF trains toward their deaths – SNCF still adamantly refuses to pay any reparations.
It is simply unconscionable that SNCF’s American subsidiary is now competing to build and operate the light-rail Purple Line in my home state of Maryland – valued at more than $6 billion and one of the single biggest contracts in state history – while refusing to be held accountable.
Please sign my petition to hold SNCF accountable at last.
When I first came to America in 1947, I didn’t want to think about what happened to me. 15 years later, I got a letter from my cousin confirming that my mother and sisters had been killed in the camps. My wife said to me, “Now that you know what happened to your family, you have to start talking.”
So I did. I have spent decades telling the story of what happened to me. It’s emotionally upsetting, but this is the price I have to pay for being alive.
I am almost 93 years old now. If I hadn’t jumped off that train, I would have died when I was 21. In whatever time I have left, I will keep telling my story, and keep fighting for what is right. When I speak to young people about what happened to me, I tell them, each of you can make a little difference in the future. Each of you makes a little difference, but when you take it collectively, it becomes a big difference.
Thank you for standing with me and for demanding that SNCF finally be held accountable.
Leo Bretholz Baltimore, Maryland
Be a Seed for Change 
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