
Eichmann in Jerusalem
A Report on the Banality of Evil
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Narrated by:
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Wanda McCaddon
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By:
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Hannah Arendt
Sparking a flurry of heated debate, Hannah Arendt's authoritative and stunning report on the trial of German Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann first appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker in 1963. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt's postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence, Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative - an unflinching look at one of the most unsettling (and unsettled) issues of the 20th century.
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The narrator was amazing, too, using a consistent accent for Eichmann that helped me place when words were quotations when otherwise the heard text wouldn’t have made that clear. Brava.
Awe inspiring to see such a great mind at work
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Compelling, concise, colloquial
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The troubling question raised by the Eichmann case is how he (and so many like him) as a decent German “everyman” could have so lost his moral bearings that he became a willing instrument of state-sponsored mass murder directed at innocent civilian populations. He justified himself as following the established German legal order as directed by a great leader (Hitler), that obedience to state authority was a sacred duty as a German citizen, that he did what he could to lessen the sufferings of those whom he was transporting to death camps, and that he did not personally dislike Jews nor ever kill anyone himself. He had seen the death camps. He knew what was going on. Still, his main frustrations and worries seemed to center on bureaucratic confusion and infighting, slights to his authority as chief SS officer for transportation to the death camps, and his slow rate of career advancement given all that he had contributed to a smooth implementation of the transportation aspects of the “final solution” policy.
How could a truly decent person adapt his career priorities, personal talents, and otherwise normal day to day concerns to an enterprise that was fundamentally an instrument of incalculable evil and of untold and immeasurable sufferings? The answer in Eichmann’s case seems to have been a perversion of his moral sense such that the supreme and overriding good was to follow the dictates of Nazi government policy despite its flagrant violation of fundamental tenets of right and wrong he must have known since childhood. Wartime conditions, post Versailles feelings of resentment in Germany, the “stab in the back” myth as a supposed explanation for the German surrender at the end of World War I, a long German and Austrian history of anti-semitism no doubt played important roles. However, those circumstances do not excuse nor fully explain Eichmann. His story suggests that all human beings are fallible, subject to corruption of their moral sense, and capable under certain conditions of becoming untroubled instruments of horrible crimes.
We see such people today amongst the violent jihadists. We should best be on our guard against all political movements that seek to place some particular goal or policy above all considerations of right and wrong that have guided enlightened mankind throughout history.
The Evil was Hardly Banal
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Fascinating historical report on trial of Nazi war criminal
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Essential reading
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Incredible work of journalistic philosophy
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Must listen to!
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Still has Great Power to Offend
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The German parts were almost incomprehensible - the narrator should have practiced a bit more.
A reminder for present and future generations
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Lest we forget the banality of evil
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