The Reckoning

Photo credit: Mark Kohn

When Salo Muller gets on a train, it’s never a typical journey. First, he must contend with the memory of seeing his parents for the last time, in Amsterdam, days before they were transported via train to their murder in Auschwitz. The date was November 28, 1942. Salo was five years old. But trains also represent victory for Salo. In 2018, Salo challenged the Dutchrailroad company, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, for its complicity in transporting 104,000 Dutch Jews to their deaths at the hands of Nazis. He was awarded $55M which Salo distributed to all Dutch survivors, their widows/widowers, and descendants.

Now 88 years old, Salo is embarking on his greatest journey yet–suing the quasi-governmental German train company, Deutsche Reichsbahn, for its role in transporting some three million Jews to their deaths in concentration camps throughout Germany and Eastern Europe. In essence, Jews had to pay for their tickets to their own demise. If Salo is successful, it will represent one of the greatest, and perhaps one of the last, triumphs of justice and redemption for remaining Holocaust survivors and their children. Reparations combat anti-Semitism as recognizing and owning up to crimes against Jewish people in the past deters others from committing similar acts.

Executive Producer: Jay Ruderman