Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

...Eichmann rose to become the senior Nazi official in charge of deporting and transporting Europe's Jews to the death camps. Yet Arendt seems always to find a mitigating circumstance. ''He did not enter the party out of conviction, nor was he ever convinced by it,'' she writes. It was not any fanatical hatred for the Jews but a desire to advance his career that drove his work as a Nazi, she maintains. Although Eichmann had repeatedly visited Auschwitz and seen the killing apparatus there, Arendt, noting he did not personally participate in the slaughter, insists that his role in the Final Solution ''had been wildly exaggerated.'' She even has the occasional kind word for Eichmann, citing evidence, for instance, that he was ''rather decent toward his subordinates.'' Over all, Arendt concludes, Eichmann ''was not Iago and not Macbeth. . . . Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all.''

Arendt's solicitous treatment of Eichmann seems all the more unaccountable when compared to her relentlessly harsh portrayal of Europe's Jewish leaders. In a book dripping with sarcasm and scorn, Arendt reserves some of her bitterest comments for the Jewish leaders who cooperated with the Nazis. Had these leaders not so obligingly provided lists of Jewish residents, had they not so diligently compiled accounts of Jewish possessions, had they not so uniformly counseled submission to German deportation orders, many of the millions who perished during the war could have been saved, Arendt contends. ''To a Jew,'' she writes, ''this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story.''

He was in complete command of himself, nay, he was more: he was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words. He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottgläubiger, to express in common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death. He then proceeded: "After a short while, gentlemen, we shall meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria. I shall not forget them." In the face of death, he had found the cliché used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows, his memory played him the last trick; he was "elated" and he forgot that this was his own funeral.

It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us - the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.

Justice, but not mercy, is a matter of judgment,and about nothing does public opinion everywhere seem to be in happier agreement than that no one has the right to judge somebody else. What public opinion permits us to judge and even to condemn are trends, or whole groups of people - the larger the better - in short, something so general that distinctions can no longer be made, names no longer be named. Needless to add,this taboo applies doubly when the deeds or word

Justice, but not mercy, is a matter of judgment,and about nothing does public opinion everywhere seem to be in happier agreement than that no one has the right to judge somebody else. What public opinion permits us to judge and even to condemn are trends, or whole groups of people - the larger the better - in short, something so general that distinctions can no longer be made, names no longer be named. Needless to add,this taboo applies doubly when the deeds or words of famous people or men in high position are being questioned. This is currently expressed in high-flown assertions that it is "superficial" to insist on details and to mention individuals, whereas it is the sign of sophistication to speak in generalities according to which all cats are gray and we are all equally guilty. Thus the charge Hochhuth has raised against a single Pope - one man, easily identifiable, with a name of his own- was immediately countered with an indictment of all Christianity. The charge against Christianity in general, with its two thousand years of history, cannot be proved, and if it could be proved, it would be horrible. No one seems to mind this so long as no person is involved, and it is quite safe to go one step further and to maintain: "Undoubtedly there is reason for grave accusations, but the defendant is mankind as a whole."

"In the spring of 1944, when the Red Army had occupied Rumania and the Allies were about to enter Rome, the Germans broke their promise and began shipping Jews from Italy to Auschwitz--about seventy-five hundred people, of whom no more than six hundred returned. Still, this came to considerably less than ten per cent of all Jews then living in Italy."