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Norway rail firm ‘should apologise’ for Nazi past

Norwegian train company NSB is facing calls to apologise for transporting Norwegian Jews and using prisoners of war during Norway’s occupation by Nazi Germany.

Norway rail firm 'should apologise' for Nazi past
An NSB locomotive during the Nazi occupation. Photo: Norwegian Railway Museum
Bjørg Eva Aasen, curator of a new exhibition on NSB’s collaboration with Nazi Germany said that NSB had neither made an attempt to examine its own dark history, nor apologies to those affected by its collaboration in inhuman acts.  
 
“I wish they had apologised to the Jews, and also to all the East European prisoners of war who were working for them on the construction of the Nordland Line,” she told the Local. “They say it’s a sad story, but they don’t apologise.” 
 
A large part of the exhibition at the Norwegian Railway museum in Hamar is devoted to how NSB collaborated with the Germans on the extension of the Nordland Line from Mosjøen to Dunderland, fot which the Germans put enormous numbers of Soviet prisoners of war to work in slave-like conditions.
 
Aasen has also uncovered new documents showing that as well as helping transport Jews from Oslo, which was previously known, NSB transported Jews from Trondheim. 
 
Bjørn Westlie, the Norwegian journalist who has turned himself into a historian of Norwegian collaboration with the Nazi occupation, told NRK that NSB should be more open about its dark past. 
 
“This is something NSB has tried to hide for 70 years. They should tell the whole story of what happened,” he said. 
 
NSB also chose not to send a representative to the opening of the exhibition. 
 
“Our president is on a journey on business to Vienna. I was meant to go to Hamar today, but had to cancel the trip for a meeting that it’s very important I attend,”  Åge-Christoffer Lundeby, a communications director for the company told The Foreigner. 
 
He earlier told Norway's Dagsavisen newspaper that the deportation of Jews from Norway to go to Nazi death camps, was "regrettable". 
 
“The persecution and deportation of Jews is clearly a dark chapter in Norwegian history. NSB's participation in this story is extremely regrettable,” he said. 
 
In another interview Lundeby questioned whether NSB had been motivated by profit. 
 
“It is here that this difficult discussion comes in: what was done voluntarily as business strategy, and what was done as a result of coercion under foreign occupation,” he told NRK. 
 
 
 

RAILWAY

Planned train strike set to hit services in Paris and surrounding region

Commuters and rail passengers in the Paris region face disruption on Monday with SNCF rail workers set to stage a strike.

Planned train strike set to hit services in Paris and surrounding region
Photo: Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP

The strike was called by several unions representing SNCF workers (SUD-Rail, CGT, Unsa and CFGT), who denounced the severe worsening of working conditions.

The strike will likely affect train routes all over the greater Paris region of Île-de-France, including the Paris RER suburban train service, but not the Paris Metro or bus routes, which are run by Paris transport authority RATP.

Updated timetables should be available on Sunday evening from 5pm on Île-de-France Mobilités, Transilien or the Assistant SNCF app.

The hardline CGT union has also called for a national strike on the railways on July 1st in a dispute over pay and working conditions.

However, it only involves a single union so is unlikely to cause widespread disruption.

READ ALSO: French union calls for national rail strike in July

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