All of us are well aware of the Holocaust drama. You may also be aware of the creation of the Jewish state of Israel – on top of an already existing Palestine – as well as with this new state’s desire for vengeance.
Adolf Eichmann was one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. After the victory of the Allied forces, he fled to Argentina. Mossad confirmed his location in 1960. He was soon captured and brought to Israel on fifteen criminal charges. Ms Hannah Arendt was sent to cover this trial, which was one of the most widely covered trails of all time. It is rather surprising that Arendt – a Jew – relieved the man of his guilt. This, of course, is an oversimplification. Arendt claimed that Eichmann was only but following – what he believed to be true.
His inhumane actions were a result of what he thought was his duty. This man was just doing his job! Hannah Arendt received criticism from the Jewish and pro-Israeli scholars for her reporting of Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem. In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), she calls Eichmann a “thoughtless” bureaucrat – one conveniently willing to overlook radical evil in exchange for his personal advancement.
She does not believe Eichmann to be a dangerous or devilish man who wanted to destroy the Jews. He was not a “monster”, she claimed; he was a “clown”. His actions were not a consequence of his antisemitism per se. According to Arendt, Eichmann did not harbour any ill feelings towards his victims. Eichmann was simply a man who took orders from the Nazis.
He was a symptom of a broader problem. There were so many like him. His activities were a result of this complete thoughtlessness. He was a man who acted without thinking about the consequences of his actions. Peter J Haas argues that the Holocaust was made possible due to a sustained effort that emerged out of a new “Nazi ethic”. Eichmann’s actions were in line with this ethic, i.e. the unwavering belief that elimination of the Jews was justified. This ethic became deeply entrenched in the psyche of both, the perpetrators and the bystanders.
This implied that Adolf Eichmann’s actions (as a “thoughtless bureaucrat”) were ultimately justified, even made legitimate, due to this Nazi ethic. Arendt was judged harshly by pro-Israeli factions in political and academic circles alike. Jewish intellectuals, many of whom were her friends, turned against Arendt following her report pieces on the Eichmann trials, which she covered for The New Yorker.
This anger from the Jewish community is a result of two fundamental ideas:
i) Arendt’s accurate analysis emerged at a time when the Jewish community was still healing from the Holocaust. The pain of the Jews was the most intense at that time, and the community felt the most vulnerable.
ii) It was a known fact that Arendt had been trained under two of the greatest philosophers ever to be produced by Germany – Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, the former have been an outward Nazi (Rubenstein, 2012).
Arendt’s affair with Heidegger was made public and it did not help her gain Jewish sympathy. Arendt received criticism for her acceptance of Eichmann’s statement of not having any ill will. Furthermore, Arendt was curious about the legal intentions behind the public trial. She rightly pointed out how the newfound nation-state of Israel was appropriating the prosecution of Eichmann exclusively on the name of its own population. Arendt’s friend Gershom Scholem accused her of using a malicious tone. He felt that she had little sympathy concerning the events of the Holocaust. He also pointed out that by describing Eichmann as a “convert to Zionism”, she has proved her profound dislike for everything to do with Zionism. He accused her of making a mockery of Zionism, which he believed to be her intention.