GERMANY:German rail operator Deutsche Bahn has been criticised for demanding rail usage fees from the organiser of the "Train of Commemoration", a rolling exhibition about the Holocaust, writes Derek Scallyin Berlin.
The exhibition, housed in a historical train, tells some of the stories of the million children deported to concentration camps during the Third Reich.
Over 40,000 people have visited the exhibition since it began its journey last November along the routes used for deportation to camps.
Currently in Hanover, the train will end its 3,000km journey next May in Auschwitz.
Hans-Rüdiger Minow, the "Train of Commemoration" spokesman, said that Deutsche Bahn had opposed the exhibition "every step of the way". He said the demand for "tens of thousands of euro" in fees amounted to a "boycott of this public commemoration".
Now Mr Minow has called for a boycott of Deutsche Bahn, the indirect successor to the German Reichsbahn. It not only provided the logistics that not only made the Holocaust possible but turned it into a lucrative earner.
For the transportation of Jews, and Gypsies as well as homosexuals and political prisoners, the company charged the Nazi authorities four Reichspfennig per head and kilometre for a trip in "third class" - unheated cattle transport carriages. Children under 10 years travelled half-price and under-fours travelled for free. The Nazis, in turn, billed Jewish communities for the transportation of their vanished friends and neighbours.
The "Train of Commemoration" controversy has prompted furious reaction in Germany: leading newspapers have suggested that, by demanding track usage fees, Deutsche Bahn is repeating the practice of its predecessor.
"It's unscrupulous for Deutsche Bahn to indirectly enrich itself from the fate of the deportees of the German Reichsbahn," commented one leading daily yesterday.
"It's shabby behaviour that could not be more humiliating for the survivors." A Deutsche Bahn spokesperson has said the company is "obliged" to charge all train operators without exception for use of its network.
It's the second row involving the company and the Holocaust. For years it has refused requests to allow its stations to show a travelling exhibition about the deportation to death camps of 16,000 French children. After a four-year battle, the company has finally agreed to host the exhibition in Berlin later this month.