The Nico Gunzburg Foundation has sued Belgian rail operator SNCB and the Belgian state, seeking damages and formal recognition of responsibility for wartime deportations during the Second World War.
According to reports on Wednesday in Het Laatste Nieuws and De Morgen, the case concerns 28 convoys that left the Dossin barracks in Mechelen between August 1942 and July 1944.
Almost all of the trains travelled directly to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland.
Those on board were mainly Jews, numbering about 25,000, as well as several hundred Roma and Sinti. Only a little over 1,000 of them survived the war.
Historical research by Nico Wouters has already shown that SNCB was paid at the time for its cooperation with the German occupiers.
Given that the Belgian state was a shareholder in SNCB, the public authorities are also being targeted in the legal action.
Talks had previously taken place with SNCB and the government, but so far they have produced no result.
The legal proceedings could be suspended if the Belgian state and the rail company agree to return to the negotiating table to discuss compensation.
The Foundation Nico Gunzburg was established in 2024 in Antwerp by its registered administrators and directors, Alexander Zanzer and Laurent Trau.
Zanzer was the director of Belgium’s Royal Society of Jewish Welfare for two decades, while Trau is the Honorary Consul of Israel for the Flemish Region, who operates out of the honorary consulate located in Antwerp.
Last weekend, Belgium's national railway operator SNCB/NMBS marked its 100th birthday.
