Eichmann and the banalization of evil.
A case that deeply outraged the world and was brilliantly documented and criticized by the philosopher Hannah Arendt.
In 1960, Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped by the Israeli Security Service in Argentina and was transferred to Israel where he was to stand trial on charges of being one of the main protagonists of the Holocaust and facilitating the deportation of thousands of jews to ghettos and concentration camps. On June 1, 1962, he was hanged.
“Only pure and simple thoughtlessness (…) was what predisposed him to become the greatest criminal of all times.”
— Hannah Arendt
We all recognize the Holocaust as one of the greatest atrocities ever committed by human beings. Testimonies from people like Viktor Frankl, Olga Lengyel and Roman Polanski fill us with great powerlessness and thousands of questions. One of these questions is how it is possible that a whole machinery of evil could be structured to end the lives of millions of people, including not only jews, but also gypsies, homosexuals and children. The question goes far beyond the catastrophic events, but also beyond the fact of how a single person could act so cruelly and indifferently towards another human being.
Hannah Arendt tried to answer these questions and was severely criticized by the Jewish community, to which she belonged.
About Hannah Arendt.
Considered a philosopher and political theorist of Jewish descent, Hannah Arendt stood out for her reflection on issues such as totalitarianism, freedom and the Holocaust, which she experienced very closely due to her imprisonment in Germany. She managed to escape and went into exile in France and finally in the United States, where she spent the rest of her life and wrote much of her work.
The case of Adolf Eichmann and his capture began to resonate around the world, so the New Yorker magazine decided to contact Hannah Arendt to attend the trial and write a series of articles that would later become her famous book called “Eichmann in Jerusalem.”
Eichmann in Jerusalem.
Eichmann joined the German National Socialist in 1932 and that same year he was relocated to the SS Internal Police Service where he was considered an expert on Judaism and was responsible for investigations, deportations, and eventually murder. Something that intrigued thousands of people — especially Arendt — was the fact that during the trial he stated that he did not feel any kind of hatred towards Jews. In fact,he owed a lot to some of them, since when he was a child — due to his parents’ occupation — they took care of him. He did not show hatred towards this community as other soldiers. This led to the question of why he acted as he did, to which he replied: “I was following orders from the state.” Many of the statements he presented had the same meaning; he was only following the orders he had been given so that he did not see anything wrong with his actions, he was only doing his duty.
Arendt’s book caused great indignation, especially by the Jewish community. Many read in it that Arendt blamed the Jewish people or that we should be condescending to Eichmann as he was a completely “normal” human being. But that was not what Hannah Arendt meant. She was undoubtedly in favor of the trial being held so that he could be punished accordingly; it was clear that Eichmann had committed great atrocities and that was not in question. However, she wanted to point out the irony that Eichmann was not a man with a deep hatred of the Jews and not even a very intelligent human being, and yet he actively participated in a machine that was aimed at extermination.
The banalization of evil.
It is because of all the irony surrounding this case that Hannah decides to formulate the concept of “the banalization of evil”, which refers to the fact that great evils can be committed without even being a “bad” person or with a totally inverted system of values, but only by the mere fact of not having a capacity for judgment. When Eichmann was given all these orders he did not really ask himself whether what he was doing was right or how he could harm people with his actions, he simply obeyed. Like an automaton. With this, Arendt pointed out that literally anyone could be a participant in horrible acts just by not questioning himself. In Eichmann’s case he was involved in a country and a society in which a totalitarian regime was present; many people thought like him.
The Holocaust is something that will always be remembered, and Hannah Arendt comes to denounce something that is still very present in society; something that had already been denounced by Kant. We must think for ourselves, we must encourage and stimulate our capacity for judgment.
Otherwise someone else will do it for us to the point of controlling our lives and leading us into catastrophic actions.
