From simpleton to sage -- Eichmann and the Holocaust

As I attempt to dip into Penguin's Great Ideas series again, I pose the question:

How do you even speak about the holocaust?

To begin with, I know far less about the holocaust than I ought to. Most of my knowledge of it is of a folkloric sort, without much of a sense of the details. The holocaust is such a loaded topic that even though the world must never forget it, people find something suspicious about the desire to examine it. It is too morbid to discuss. It is horrible. It is accursed. It is taboo, but strangely sacred at the same time.

Hannah Arendt’s job in 1963 was to report for the New Yorker on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the former Nazi, held in Jerusalem, at which he was sentenced to death. The report, erudite, probing, fascinating, and gripping as it was, suffered sharp criticism after its publication as the book, Eichmann in Jerusalem. In the Postscript, which stands on its own as the best excerpt reprinted in Eichmann and the Holocaust, Arendt was able to answer her critics and explain what the book and the meaning of the trial really were.

Eichmann and the Holocaust offers the reader relatively little background, presuming a strong prior knowledge of the facts. Knowing nothing about Eichmann, I was at a disadvantage. From what I gather in these excerpts, Eichmann was the man largely responsible for designing and carrying out the mass executions of millions of Jewish people during World War II. Arendt touches on the personality of Eichmann and others, their deeds, and some of the issues that arose in the trial. It is all endlessly fascinating stuff: why did these Nazis do what they did? Why did so few people protest? How could justice be done in this unprecedented situation? It’s just too much to cover in 130 pages. I’d suggest skipping this slim edition of well-meant excerpts, and devoting some serious attention to the original book in its entirety.

Some great ideas I picked out:
-- Eichmann’s character inspired Arendt to coin the expression, “The banality of evil.” (90)

-- “[Eichmann] knew quite well what it was all about… He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness -- something by no means identical with stupidity -- that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of the period.” (115)

-- “Had the court in Jerusalem understood that there were distinctions between discrimination, expulsion, and genocide, it would immediately have become clear that the supreme crime it was confronted with, the physical extermination of the Jewish people, was a crime against humanity, perpetrated upon the body of the Jewish people, and that only the choice of victims, not the nature of the crime, could be derived from the long history of Jew-hatred and anti-semitism.” (93)