France’s national railway, the S.N.C.F., has issued its first public apology for its involvement in the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II. Guillaume Pepy…, the railway’s director, expressed the company’s “profound sorrow and regret for the consequences of its acts” in a statement released last week but first reported Friday. “The Nazis and their French (Vichy) collaborators directed these terrible actions, determining the composition of the trains, the types of wagons and even the train schedules,” Mr. Pepy said. The statement, published in English, came after lawmakers in California and Florida moved to block the S.N.C.F. from winning contracts for high-speed rail projects in their states if it did not recognize its role in the Holocaust.