Holocaust Biographies; Adolf Eichmann: Engineer of Death

Accused, the court convicts you of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, a war crime, and membership in hostile organizations."" With these blunt words, Judge Moshe Landau, speaking before a stunned audience shortly after 9 AM on December 11, 1961, passed final judgement on the career and accomplishments of Adolf Eichmann.

It is difficult to summarize a life like Adolf Eichmann's into a mere 12,000 words and still present a reasonable amount of information. But as this series has a specific focus, that was the task at hand.

I tried to rely on original documents wherever possible. A superb reference on Eichmann's life as a Nazi is his own memoirs, written while in prison. They can be downloaded free of charge from nizkor.org (original German language writing only). While you must take his self-defense with a grain of salt, it still helps to know how he thought. Zvi Aharoni's book about Eichmann's capture and arrest is a must-read if this topic intrigues you.

But I was less interested in capture, arrest, and trial than I was in how an underachiever like Adolf Eichmann could have orchestrated so much evil in so short a time. That became the focus of this short book.

Incidentally, I read Hannah Arendt's book too as part of the research exercise and found her words contradicting not only the trial reports as recorded by the New York Times, Time Magazine, and the like (sources I used), but contradicting my gut instincts about Eichmann as well. I could not understand her almost-defense of his deeds with the words "banality of evil." The only thing banal about Eichmann was the appearance he studiously put forward during his trial. I saw nothing banal in the evil he had committed.

You must, however, comprehend Hannah Arendt's (a Jewish philosopher) affair with Heidegger both before and after the war, and the fact that she crafted the defense in Nuremberg, to understand how she could find Eichmann's sort of evil "banal". But she will perhaps be the topic of a whole other book.