DUTCH NATIONAL RAILWAY ADMITS COLLABORATION WITH NAZIS

Dutch railway firm confronts Nazi past
Sixty years after the end of World War II, the Dutch national railway company apologized on Thursday for its role in deporting thousands of Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Aad Veenman, chief executive of Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), acknowledged for the first time that his firm had collaborated with Nazi occupiers by deporting 107,000 Dutch Jews -- 70 percent of the country's Jewish community -- to death camps in Germany and Poland.

"On behalf of the company and from the bottom of my heart, I sincerely apologise for what happened during the war," Veenman said at a ceremony that launched an anti-racism poster campaign across 66 Dutch railway stations.

The apology, which comes at a time of increasing religious and racial tension in the Netherlands, was made at Muiderpoort station in Amsterdam, from where 11,000 Jews were deported.