YN: A French court on Tuesday ordered the state and railway operator SNCF to pay fines for their role in the deportation of Jews during World War Two,? a lawyer for the SNCF said.?

Alain Lipietz, a Greens European Parliament deputy, and his sister Helene had sued SNCF for transporting their father and three relatives to a wartime transit camp that sent Jews off to Nazi concentration camps.?

The French state could not have been unaware that transportation to the Drancy transit camp near Paris was a “prelude to deportation” to concentration camps, lawyer Yves Baudelot quoted the judges as saying. The SNCF and the French state were ordered to pay total fines of some 60,000 euros ($77,000) to the plaintiffs, Baudelot told Reuters.

The court also said the SNCF had never objected or protested against conducting the transportations, and had put Jews in freight carriages without food or minimal standard of hygiene, Baudelot quoted the court as saying. Baudelot said his client would appeal against the verdict…..