The French state and railway operator SNCF face at least 200 new lawsuits for their role in the deportation of Jews during World War II, a lawyer handling the petitions said.

SNCF has already appealed against a French court ruling in June which ordered it and the state to pay total fines of euros60,000 ($A101,291) for transporting Jews to a wartime transit camp from where they were sent to Nazi concentration camps.

However, more lawsuits are pouring in before a deadline on September 1 which marks the statutory limitation for filing petitions against the SNCF, the lawyer said.

“We have about 200 petitions … (and) we are expecting more,” Matthieu Delmas, the lawyer dealing with these petitions said, adding that his clients included nationals of France, Israel, the United States, Canada and Belgium.

SNCF said it had no immediate comment. Its lawyer had said in June the railway could not be held responsible for the transportation because it had been forced to co-operate with German occupying forces during the war.

The court ruling in June came after a similar suit in 2003 failed when a Paris court ruled it could not establish that the SNCF was responsible for transporting Jews.

Of the 330,000 Jews living in France in 1940, 75,721 were deported to death camps and only about 2,500 returned alive.

NM