The families - French, Israeli, American, Belgian and Canadian - plan to send a letter this week to the SNCF rail network urging compensation of several million euros, said lawyer Avi Bitton. He didn't say when the letter would be sent. If that tactic fails, they plan to sue, he said.

The families were encouraged by a June ruling by an administrative court in Toulouse, southern France, which ordered the state and the rail authority to pay damages of EUR62,000 for its role in World War II deportations. The SNCF has appealed the decision.

In that case, European Green Party lawmaker Alain Lipietz, his sister, Helene, and other family members had brought a suit on behalf of four of their relatives taken to a Nazi transit camp at Drancy near Paris in May 1944.

The four were transported in cattle cars by the SNCF from southwest France to Drancy and remained there for several months until the camp was freed in July 1944, according to the lawsuit. Drancy was a stopover point for Jews deported to Nazi death camps including Auschwitz.

The June decision was the first of its kind. A similar 2003 case against the SNCF in a civil court failed because a 30-year statute of limitations period had passed. Such a time delay was not applicable in the administrative court.

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New French lawsuits for WWII 'transport'

Ninemsn: Aug 28

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.