After the Genocide: Proximity to Victims and Support for Punishing Ingroup Crimes

Abstract

What explains divergent transitional justice preferences among political elites after genocide? We argue that elite preferences vary with their proximity to the victimized group. Individuals who know the victims personally and/or have witnessed violence against them may be more likely to support punishing the perpetrators, possibly because they experience collective guilt. We support this argument using an original biographical dataset on the members of the West German parliament, linking their location and experiences during the Third Reich to free roll-call votes on extending the statute of limitations for murder in 1965–69. We find that proximity to synagogues, particularly those attacked in November 1938, predicts support for extending the statute, conditional on party, state, mandate type, denomination, and a host of personal attributes. We also find significantly lower support for extending the statute among former NSDAP members. Our findings highlight the importance of bystander experiences in shaping support for retributive justice.