Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Arendt, Hannah

ISBN 10: 0670290386 / ISBN 13: 9780670290383

Published by Viking Press, US, 1963

About this Item

Viking Press 1963 First Edition Pu(Y) Fine/Near Fine Full title - Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Light-tan-color cloth with black and red text blocks and black spine lettering. Bright unclipped dust jacket with tiny mended spine end tears o/w Fine, protected in clear dust jacket cover. Solid structure, tight bright pages. Inside page edges deckled. 12+275+5 pages with index. HEAVY ITEM 1.24 Pounds. Size: 8 5/8 x 6 x 1 1/4 inches.

Seller Inventory # 370196

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
• Publisher: Viking Press, US
• Publication Date: 1963
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670290386
• ISBN 13: 9780670290383
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition Pu(Y).
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Book Type: No Exp

About this title

Synopsis

Hannah Arendt's authoritative report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann includes further factual material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt's postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account.

Review

While living in Argentina in 1960, Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped and smuggled to Israel where he was put on trial for crimes against humanity. The New Yorker magazine sent Hannah Arendt to cover the trial. While covering the technical aspects of the trial, Arendt also explored the wider themes inherent in the trial, such as the nature of justice, the behavior of the Jewish leadership during the Nazi Régime, and, most controversially, the nature of Evil itself.

Far from being evil incarnate, as the prosecution painted Eichmann, Arendt maintains that he was an average man, a petty bureaucrat interested only in furthering his career, and the evil he did came from the seductive power of the totalitarian state and an unthinking adherence to the Nazi cause. Indeed, Eichmann's only defense during the trial was "I was just following orders."

Arendt's analysis of the seductive nature of evil is a disturbing one. We would like to think that anyone who would perpetrate such horror on the world is different from us, and that such atrocities are rarities in our world. But the history of groups such as the Jews, Kurds, Bosnians, and Native Americans, to name but a few, seems to suggest that such evil is all too commonplace. In revealing Eichmann as the pedestrian little man that he was, Arendt shows us that the veneer of civilization is a thin one indeed.