Now – more than six decades after the Nazi’s “final solution to the Jewish question” rightly was crushed by civilized humanity, debates over the Shoah’s moral legacy seem to appear with increasing frequency. The latest chapter in that painful effort has come to our own state.

It’s in the form of a roughly $1 billion bid to the Maryland Transit Authority by Keolis Rail Services, which wants to operate the Maryland Area Regional Commuter (MARC) train service lines for Brunswick and Camden – the ones thousands of people take every day.

The problem: The majority owner of Keolis is the French railway company SNCF or the Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais. That line, partially owned by the French government since 1938, transported nearly 77,000 Jews and other victims from France to Nazi concentration camps. Even more horrifying is that doing so was profitable.

The Nazis paid SNCF for the deportations per person and per kilometer.
So it’s no surprise that a group of 269 Holocaust survivors – include two living in Pikesville—are heatedly criticizing the Virginia Railway Express for awarding an $85 million contract to Keolis. Attorneys for the group want SNCF to not only acknowledge and apologize for its role in the Holocaust, but to pay reparations of some sort. And the Maryland participants are not interested in seeing the company gain from our state without the same.

MTA officials will not say when they will decide on who gets the contract, and certainly don’t welcome the publicity. Still, they are declaring the need for secrecy on such matters because other bids are coming in. That’s offensive. This is public business and no one is asking them to give out details of the proposed contract itself.

Meanwhile, the rail company should indeed apologize with sincerity. In acknowledging its complicity in humanity’s most documented crime, it should find a way to financially support educational efforts to perpetuate the profoundly tragic lessons of the Shoah. That can come in the support of the aging survivors themselves, Holocaust museums such as the ones in Washington, Israel or France, and in the underwriting of educational curriculum.

Frankly, the money is not as important as the intent – but the money does make heads turn and corporations think about the ethics of what they do (or at least let them know they can held responsible for their actions). We cannot and dare not ever forget the Holocaust. The challenge now is living with its heavy memory as we seek to forge a responsible society that both embraces the past while striving to create a more cohesive, promising future.

Point taken. On a similar note and having lost relatives in the Holocaust, I won’t buy or support products like Mercedes Benzes or Fords (since Henry Ford was a known anti Semite). So, I can understand (to what extent that I can) why many Shoah survivors will not support MARC and the Virginia Railway Express.