In her report of Nazi SS member Adolph Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, first published as a series of articles in The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt managed to spark great controversy, both in the academy and among the general public. The primary attack on Arendt was that she seemed to “blame the victim”, in this case the Jews, for their role in their own extermination during the Holocaust. While by no means the focus of her book, this perceived accusation in combination with her portrayal of Eichmann as an apparently sane, ordinary man made readers uncomfortable at best and at worst vindictive and unforgiving in their critique. In assuming the objective, detached role she did, she risked ostracizing herself from both friends and colleagues as well as the Jewish community as a whole. That Arendt could insist Eichmann lacked the evil qualities he was accused of possessing, and was not the sadistic, inhuman monster the prosecution and everyone else wanted him to be was inconceivable. On the contrary, Arendt was disturbed by Eichmann, but instead by his obvious mediocrity. Were he the monster that he was expected to be, one could have easily judged and separated oneself from him, taking pride in the striking contrast between one and the accused. Instead, people were faced with a supposedly “evil” man who was, for the most part, not significantly different from the average man. It would go against the common sense of most to consider a man who facilitated such a great number of deaths “normal.” While commonplace in some ways, he represents a failed product of humanity; more specifically, he is an existential failure. The appearance of normalcy merely comes from how smoothly and effortlessly one can slip into that role. Eichmann proves himse...
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... up in the wave of “moral collapse” that struck all of European society. (Arendt 125) From the perspective of the existentialist, and indeed that of anyone with a shred of commonsensical morality, Adolf Eichmann acted irrationally and in a condemnable manner. The truth is, however, that it is easier than most would like to admit to understand the temptation of renouncing freedom and responsibility, and the demands of individuality and morality that accompany it. Arendt's work forces us to confront not the ugly chapters of human history or particular examples of ugly humans, but the tantalizing potentiality for ugliness and evil that can be found in us all.
Works Cited
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York:Penguin, 2006. Print.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism and Human Emotions. New York:Carol Pub. Group, 1993. Print.
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
Simon Wiesenthal: The Nazi Hunter. There are many heroic individuals in history that have shown greatness during a time of suffering, as well as remorse when greatness is needed, but one individual stood out to me above them all. He served as a hero among all he knew and all who knew him. This individual, Simon Wiesenthal, deserves praise for his dedication to his heroic work tracking and prosecuting Nazi war criminals that caused thousands of Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other victims of the Holocaust to suffer and perish. The Life of a Holocaust Victim The effect the Holocaust had on Wiesenthal played a major role in the person he made himself to be.
Most narratives out of the Holocaust from the Nazis point of view are stories of soldiers or citizens who were forced to partake in the mass killings of the Jewish citizens. Theses people claim to have had no choice and potentially feared for their own lives if they did not follow orders. Neighbors, The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan T. Gross, shows a different account of people through their free will and motivations to kill their fellow Jewish Neighbors. Through Gross’s research, he discovers a complex account of a mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jews living in the town of Jedwabne Poland in 1941. What is captivating about this particular event was these Jews were murdered by friends, coworkers, and neighbors who lived in the same town of Jedwabne. Gross attempts to explain what motivated these neighbors to murder their fellow citizens of Jedwabne and how it was possible for them to move on with their lives like it had never happened.
Once again the Jews were picked as scapegoats to help push the political and social agendas of those who held higher office in the form of the Holocaust. Through the processes of propaganda and mass media, the Nazi party was able to desensitize an entire nation of people towards the process of dehumanization. In the reading of Elie Wiesel’s novel Night we were able to gain a personal first hand account of what atrocities were committed against these people in the process of stripping them of their humanity. Upon entering the concentration camps, Eliezer gives us insight into the internal feelings that one experiences when he is stripped of his humanity. He states, “never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes” (Wiesel
The Holocaust was one of the greatest tragedies the world has ever known. There were many key people who participated in this outrageous genocide however some get more attention then others. Adolf Eichmann is a classic example. Eichmann was a self-proclaimed “Jewish Specialist” and head of the Gestapo Department. Eichmann was responsible for keeping every train rolling right into the stations of the concentration and death camps during the holocaust. Now we will take a look into Eichmann’s childhood, life experiences, and his later actions to see what shaped into a man of hatred towards the Jewish race.
Hannah Arendt discovered a concept known as “The banality of Evil” during the time of the Holocaust, she wanted to understand the nature of evil and explain how it can be different from the concept of radical evil. Her theory arose from the actions led by a man whose job was to organize the transportation of Jews to concentration camps in various cities. Adolf Eichman was a typical Bureaucrat. Arendt described him as an average joe whose sole purpose was to be successful and follow the orders lead by his superior, Hitler. The orders led by Hitler are portrayed as motives led by absolute evil or “radical evil”. Arendt noted in her philosophy paper that there is a significant difference of character in Hitler and Eichman such that Hitler was
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York, N.Y: Penguin Books, 2006. Internet resource.
Murders inflicted upon the Jewish population during the Holocaust are often considered the largest mass murders of innocent people, that some have yet to accept as true. The mentality of the Jewish prisoners as well as the officers during the early 1940’s transformed from an ordinary way of thinking to an abnormal twisted headache. In the books Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Ordinary men by Christopher R. Browning we will examine the alterations that the Jewish prisoners as well as the police officers behaviors and qualities changed.
The atrocities that swept through Europe during World War II brought with them the cultivation of a horrific contagion: dehumanization. The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel exemplifies the spread of this disease by following Wiesel’s journey through the concentration camps of the 1940s. At the time, the stories may have seemed unimaginable, but today, historians cannot deny what happened during that dark time before liberation. Wiesel’s memoir can be used as evidence. Through their inevitable acceptance and continuation of the dehumanization displayed by the Nazis, prisoners of the WWII concentration camps were doomed to slow and painful deaths.
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
In AD Moses’ Modernity and the Holocaust, he analyzes the book Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation written by the historian Omar Bartov. In addition, he also briefly explains Zygmunt Bauman’s book Modernity and the Holocaust. Bauman was a major influence on Bartov’s understanding of the Holocaust, so Moses does a good job of bringing him into the analyzation process. Finally, Moses discusses an opposing position through the book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust written by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. This paper will discuss the themes and reasons behind the Holocaust brought up by Bartov, Bauman, and Goldhagen as well as other themes and reason from sources outside of this
Levi contends that the “collective crime” of the German people as bystanders was “the most obvious demonstration of the cowardice to which Hitlerian terror had reduced them: a cowardice which became an integral part of mores and so profound as to prevent husbands from telling their wives, parents their children” (15). Self-preservation is a natural instinct, so when an individual faces a threat as pervasive as that of the Nazis during the early 1940s, it can’t be fair to assign responsibility of the perpetrators’ success to an individual who succumbed to this fear. This is why Levi is careful to discuss the choice to be a bystander as a collective crime as opposed to an individualized one. Of course, the population of German bystanders as an entity is still comprised of individuals who would each needed to have resisted fear and spoken out to have prevented the collective crime. Although Levi certainly provides a convincing argument for the assignment of some responsibility for the success of the Holocaust to bystanders, the situation is not without
How does someone kill 6 million Jews? That was Adolf Eichmann’s job and passion to figure out. He had a key role in sending Jews to concentration camps and ordering them to be killed during the Holocaust. Adolf Eichmann had very good organizational skills that made him affective at carrying out his duties during the Holocaust; however, he used these talents for evil purposes.
The thoughtlessness in which Eichmann embodied in the courtroom, along with the normalcy he possesses, aids in the development of the enigmatic structure of the trial. Arendt's battle to find middle-ground between the idea of Eichmann as a common man attempting to fulfill objectives and his connection to the Nazi regime is what defies original theories on evil. The guilt Eichmann carries is clearly much larger than the man himself, especially one so simplistic and thoughtless. Therefore, the evil presented in Eichma...