“Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil” is a journalistic report written by Hannah Arendt, originally published in 1963. Ardent covers the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official responsible for the organization and deportation of Jews to ghettos and concentration camps during the Holocaust. He held an administrative position in the SS and was responsible for the mass killings of Jewish people. Eichmann was sentenced to death by hanging after his trial in Jerusalem. In this book, Arendt explores human morality, the nature of evil, and the complexities of responsibility. She sought to understand the motivations and the mindset of Eichmann. Arendt suggests that Eichmann was a thoughtless character and not a horrendous villain. …show more content…
Arendt observed how Eichmann regurgitated clichés during his trial. “As we shall see, this horrible gift for consoling himself with clichés did not leave him in the hour of his death” (55). Eichmann tried to distance himself from his actions and justify his participation in the Holocaust. He was trying to portray himself as an unimportant soldier who follows orders without a blink. This was a conscious effort on his part. Eichmann played an active role in perpetrating a mass act of wickedness. Arendt argues that Eichmann could not comprehend the severity of his actions and could only interpret his behaviors and orders as obeying the law or complying with government ordinances. Arendt seems to believe that a non-feeble-minded person can be incapable of discerning objective right from objective wrong, and an authority can skew a moral compass even more in such a person. “...the law of Hitler’s land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody “Thou shalt kill”...many Germans and many Nazis...must have been tempted not to murder, not to rob, not to let their neighbors go off to their doom” (150). This quote demonstrates how a moral compass can be skewed by a “trusted” authority, according to
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.
Throughout the Holocaust, the Jews were continuously dehumanized by the Nazis. However, these actions may not have only impacted the Jews, but they may have had the unintended effect of dehumanizing the Nazis as well. What does this say about humanity? Elie Wiesel and Art Spiegelman both acknowledge this commentary in their books, Night and Maus. The authors demonstrate that true dehumanization reveals that the nature of humanity is not quite as structured as one might think.
Despite the overwhelming evidence against Eichmann, he remained concrete in his defense of himself. He played off his responsibility as something he was merely told to do and that he "condemn[s] and regret[s] the act of extermination of the Jews." A far cry in a distant world, falling on dead ears.
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Elie Wiesel) The Holocaust is a topic that is still not forgotten and is used by many people, as a motivation, to try not to repeat history. Many lessons can be taught from learning about the Holocaust, but to Eve Bunting and Fred Gross there is one lesson that could have changed the result of this horrible event. The Terrible Things, by Eve Bunting, and The Child of the Holocaust, by Fred Gross, both portray the same moral meaning in their presentations but use different evidence and word choice to create an overall
Since the publication of, Night by Eliezer Wiesel, the holocaust has been deemed one of the darkest times in humanity, from the eradication of Jewish people to killing of innocents. Wiesel was one of the Jewish people to be in the holocaust and from his experience he gave us a memoir that manages to capture the dark side of human nature in the holocaust. He demonstrates the dark side of human nature through the cruelty the guards treat the Jews and how the Jews became cold hearted to each other. Wiesel uses foreshadowing and imagery, and metaphors to describe these events.
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.
Guilt is an extremely powerful emotion that can consume one from the inside out. In the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, everybody, including the Jews act out against each other and do not stand up for one another. In this story, Jews are forced from their homes and brought to concentration camps with rough conditions. Elie’s persecution occurred in the following concentration camps: Auschwitz, Buna, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald. The Jews took on an overwhelming amount of hardships, but the most difficult obstacle to conquer was man's lack of humanity to man. Throughout the book, the inhumanity against man develops from widespread prejudice to terribly personal punishments.
Goldhagen's book however, has the merit of opening up a new perspective on ways of viewing the Holocaust, and it is the first to raise crucial questions about the extent to which eliminationist anti-Semitism was present among the German population as a whole. Using extensive testimonies from the perpetrators themselves, it offers a chilling insight into the mental and cognitive structures of hundreds of Germans directly involved in the killing operations. Anti-Semitism plays a primary factor in the argument from Goldhagen, as it is within his belief that anti-Semitism "more or less governed the ideational life of civil society" in pre-Nazi Germany . Goldhagen stated that a
Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered.
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 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...
“The Holocaust is the most investigated crime in history, as has often been pointed out in response to deniers. Eichmann may be that crime’s most investigated criminal” (Sells, Michael A.). Adolf Eichmann was one of the head Nazis. He had a lot of authority in enacting what Hitler had told the Nazis to do. He was just about as responsible as Hitler was for killing all of those innocent
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.
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...
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.