Eichmann in Jerusalem - A Report on the Banality of Evil

Arendt, Hannah

ISBN 10: 0670290386 / ISBN 13: 9780670290383

Published by The Viking Press, USA, 1963

About this Item

Hannah Arendt's report on the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann. Her "command of politics and philosophy, her study of the Nuremberg trials and the Successor trials make it possible for her to isolate the points of international law and human justice raised in Jerusalem and valid throughout the world. Her report marks a notable step forward in the exploration of the human condition." - dust jacket. "Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century." - Wikipedia. [8], 275 pages. Bibliography. Index. Book clean, tight and unmarked with moderate wear. Somewhat above-average wear to unclipped dust jacket now in glossy new archival-grade protection. A sound first edition example of this historic work. Kehr and Langmaid 5719.; Dust Jacket Design; 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall; Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem - A Report on the Banality of Evil Holocaust Kidnapping Trial Israel Jerusalem International Law. Seller Inventory # 214j1608

Bibliographic Details

Title: Eichmann in Jerusalem - A Report on the ...

Publisher: The Viking Press, USA

Publication Date: 1963

Binding: Hardcover

Illustrator: Illustrated by Ben Feder, Inc.

Condition: Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Fair

Edition: First Edition.

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.