The Dutch national railway company is planning to establish a task force to investigate how it can pay individual reparations for its role in mass deportations of Jews by Nazi occupiers during World War II, after being threatened with legal action in a court hearing.
In a written statement, the rail company, NS, said that its involvement in the deportations "is a black page in the history of our country and our company."
Company spokesman Erik Kroeze said Wednesday that the investigative team will examine making payments to Dutch Holocaust survivors and direct family members of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis. He said it is not yet clear how many people could be eligible.
The company is believed to have earned what amounts to $2.6 million in today's currency from the transports.
Kroeze said it is too early to say when the investigative team, which has yet to be appointed, will submit its conclusions.
"It is important to us to put care ahead of speed," he said.
More than 100,000 Jews – 70% of the Dutch Jewish community – did not survive the war.
Most of the Dutch victims were rounded up in cities and taken by train to camps in the Netherlands before being sent to the border and put on German trains to concentration camps.
NS issued an official apology for its role in the deportations in 2005. But that was not enough for Salo Muller, a former physical therapist with Amsterdam soccer club Ajax, whose parents were sent by train to the Westerbork camp in the eastern Netherlands before being transported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered in the camp's gas chambers.
In recent years, Muller has pushed for reparations. His agreement with NS boss Roger van Boxtel was broadcast Tuesday night on Dutch current affairs show Nieuwsuur.
"What this means for me is that the NS sees that the suffering is not over; that very many Jews are still suffering," Muller said on Nieuwsuur.
"That is why I am so happy that they now see, on moral grounds ... that reparations will be paid," he said.
The Dutch railway company is not the first in Europe to confront its dark wartime history.
In 2005, French railway company SNCF expressed regret for its role in transporting Jews during World War II.
The railway has acknowledged that SNCF's equipment and staff were used to transport 76,000 Jews to camps in Germany. Only 3,000 of those 76,000 survived the war. SNCF has argued that it had no effective control over operations when France was under Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1944 .
Under pressure from politicians in the U.S., the rail company agreed to pay $192 million in reparations.
France's government has paid more than $6 billion in reparations to French citizens and certain deportees.
The German government has paid around $79.7 billion in compensation for Nazi crimes, mainly to Jewish survivors.
