Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“Justice demands that the accused be prosecuted, defended, and judged, and that all the other questions of seemingly greater import—of ‘How could it happen?’ and ‘Why did it happen?,’ of ‘Why the Jews?’ and ‘Why the Germans?,’ of ‘What was the role of other nations?’ and ‘What was the extent of co-responsibility on the side of the Allies?,’ of ‘How could the Jews through their own leaders cooperate in their own destruction?’ and ‘Why did they go to their death like lambs to the slaughter?’—be left in abeyance. Justice insists on the importance of Adolf Eichmann...On trial are his deeds, not the sufferings of the Jews, not the German people or mankind, not even anti-Semitism and racism.”

Arendt centers Eichmann and his deeds as the focus of the trial, excluding the more unanswerable questions that most will bring to the forefront of their demands of the trial. By including these questions here, even though Arendt is saying these are the questions that should be sidelined in an effort to focus on the accused, she still gives them room on the page and plants them in readers’ minds as they read the process and outcome of the proceedings.

“It is one thing to ferret out criminals and murderers from their hiding places, and it is another thing to find them prominent and flourishing in the public realm—to encounter innumerable men in the federal and state administrations and, generally, in public office whose careers had bloomed under the Hitler regime.”

Years after the end of World War II, when the world is well-versed in the atrocities of the Holocaust, many of the members of the Nazi Party who perpetrated these atrocities are not in hiding and are not living under a false identity. They are in plain sight, some even voted into office with the full knowledge of their participation in the events of the war. Arendt illustrates the fact that former Nazi leaders feel no need to live in shame or anonymity, and for them to hold such positions, they would have to be supported by many people, all whom would be incriminated through their support of these men.