“Eichmann in Jerusalem” and Our Failure to Appreciate Nuance
In 1961, Hannah Arendt went to Jerusalem to see a Nazi.
Her self-appointed task was to report for The New Yorker on Adolf Eichmann’s trial. The year before, Israeli agents had abducted the former SS official from hiding in Argentina — technically, a violation of international law — and would now make him pay for his role in the Holocaust.
Arendt expanded her initial journalistic pieces into a book, which was published in 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem caused an immediate firestorm for two main reasons. First, its critics alleged that Arendt blamed Jewish people for their suffering at the hands of the Nazis in “their failure to resist” being deported to extermination camps.
Second, in her argument that Eichmann was not some sadistic monster but rather a dull and average person who couldn’t, or refused to, think for himself, Arendt appeared to be humanizing and even empathizing with him, thus minimizing the widespread and unspeakable horrors he helped to inflict on Europe.
To see that this is exactly what Arendt isn’t doing requires the ability to appreciate nuance. Arendt is aware of — and never forgets — what Eichmann was and what Eichmann did. She wastes no ink defending him and…
