Sarah Federman - The “Ideal Perpetrator” Considering the Social-construction and Politics of Accountability: A Study of the French National Railroad (SNCF)
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The “Ideal Perpetrator”
Considering the Social-construction and Politics of Accountability:
A Study of the French National Railroad (SNCF)
By Sarah Federman
Thursday, October 29th
1:00 - 2:00pm
Metropolitan Building, room 5183
In the spirit of supporting developing scholarship and a writing culture at SCAR, this event will be designed as a workshop for an article I will submit to the International Journal for Transitional Justice. Please come to help critique this idea and ensure it makes a contribution to the field. If you email me at [email protected] prior to the event, I can send you a short summary for review. Thank you in advance. I hope that others will also soon bring their early drafts to the community.
ABSTRACT
Scholars increasingly consider the social construction of victimhood and the impact of embodying the “ideal victim.” While victims and perpetrators remain discursively linked, the construction of the “ideal perpetrator” remains a less theorized position. Mass atrocity requires the participation of numerous individuals and groups, but usually only a few individuals face trial. How are these few selected? Who is expunged? Beyond individuals, mass atrocity requires coordinated belief systems and a spirit of collaboration that remain unexamined when one perpetrator stands for all. Through a study of the contemporary debates regarding the French National Railroad (SNCF)’s role in the WWII transport of deportees towards death camps, this article considers the factors contributing to who or what becomes the proverbial fall man and who walks away. Based on archival work and over 120 interviews with Holocaust survivors, Jewish leaders, ambassadors, lawyers, legislators, historians and others, this paper considers how proximity to the crime, accessibility, personal sponsors and semiotics contribute to the social construction of the SNCF as the “ideal perpetrator.” This continued emphasis on the railroad exonerates other perpetrators and discourages the cultural self-reflection necessary to prevent future atrocities.