0 1 What he saw was different from what he imagined.
1960, adolf eichmann, a former senior Nazi German official and known as the "executioner of death", was arrested by Israeli intelligence agencies when he fled from Germany to South America with a Red Cross passport, and announced that he would be tried in Jerusalem on 196 1. Hannah arendt, a famous Jewish female philosopher, took the initiative to write a letter to The New Yorker and asked to write a report for them. She is the author of the Origin of Totalitarianism, one of the most important works in the 20th century, and the first writer to describe the Third Reich in the context of western civilization. Sean, the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, and another editor were very excited by this news, but she was also puzzled that Arendt would come to Jerusalem from the United States to attend the trial of Eichmann. Arendt's reason is that she left Germany on 1933, missed Nuremberg and never saw the Nazis again.
In fact, Arendt was once held in a concentration camp in France and witnessed how the women in the concentration camp gave up on themselves. She once encouraged the hopeless women in the concentration camp, and later she felt tired. Finally, Arendt successfully organized more than 200 women to escape from the concentration camp, and then fled France with American passports with the help of her husband. So she said that if she didn't seize this opportunity, she would never forgive herself.
Before leaving, she hardly had many opinions, but she held different opinions on congratulating her good friend Hans and worrying about her husband's trial of Eichmann: her husband Heinrich thought that Israeli agents had illegally kidnapped Eichmann because the government could not judge history, but only people, which should have been a historical trial; On the other hand, Hans believes that Israelis have the sacred right to judge the crimes committed by Nazis against Jews, and one person is tried for murder.
Just like when she wrote to the New Yorker hoping to attend Eichmann's trial, she changed "I have never seen Nazis" to "I have never seen these real people with my own eyes". When most people regard Eichmann as a monster and a devil, Eichmann in Arendt's eyes is a "real person".
During the trial, she heard the witness's statement and Eichmann's defense. She found that Eichmann was not what she expected. "He is like a cold ghost in a glass box. He is not terrible, just a nobody. He feels like a normal person. He felt that he was interrogated by everyone like a roast beef, and he himself said that he was only ordered to carry out the task, and he only took a small responsibility for this matter. " Obviously not what Kurt said, "He and the SS are monsters".
Arendt told Heinrich by phone: "If you see how they try to stay calm when testifying, most stories have nothing to do with Eichmann himself." Heinrich said: "But you and I knew from the beginning that this trial was more about the trial history than someone's personal behavior."
In the trial court, a conversation between the judge and Eichmann showed that Eichmann's answer to the judge's question was really a living person:
Eichmann: "Soldiers can't break orders and oaths. Oath is an oath."
Judge: "Do you think people who swear allegiance should automatically lift the oath of allegiance after Hitler's death?" If the Fuehrer said your father was a traitor, would you shoot him, too? "
Eichmann: "If he is proved to be a traitor, I will shoot."
Judge: "So, are you confirmed that Jews should be wiped out?"
Eichmann: "I didn't destroy them."
Judge: "Have you ever felt the conflict between duty and conscience?" ? "
Eichmann: "You can call it a split state, a split state of consciousness, and people can walk from one end to the other."
Judge: "Can a person's conscience be abandoned?"
Eichmann: "You can say that."
Judge: "If the public had more courage, things might be completely different?"
Eichmann: "Yes, public courage is organized by grades, absolutely!" " "
Judge: "So it's not fate, it's not necessity, it's human behavior."
Eichmann: "Yes, it was during the war, and the situation changed greatly.". Everyone thinks it's useless to resist. It's like throwing eggs at a stone. There is no goal, no success, no failure or anything else. " Everything is related to that era. I think in those days, children received ideological education, strict discipline and so on. "
Therefore, Arendt said that Eichmann was not an anti-Semitic, he just enforced the laws at that time. Her teacher Kurt was very angry about this and said that she was talking nonsense. Kurt believed that everyone in the Nazi Party, not to mention the SS, was a staunch anti-Semitic.
What Arendt heard and felt was Eichmann, a very ordinary man at that time: he swore that he had never hurt any Jews, but he was just a murderer who carried out all the orders of the government, and even seemed eager to make his great achievements public in every detail, but this man insisted that he was not against Jews. He blindly put Jews on the train and transported people to death, but he didn't feel responsible at all. As soon as the train started, his task was completed. So he said he was innocent, and what happened to the people he transported had nothing to do with him. "That's his idea. He is just a bureaucrat. " Arendt said.
Kurt is Arendt's most respected teacher, and Arendt calls him "family". They had a long talk about Eichmann's trial and had a heated argument. Here is a question about "believing". When Arendt described Eichmann to Kurt, Kurt repeatedly asked her, "Do you believe what he said?" It seems that Arendt is a person who has no thinking and judgment, but simply believes Eichmann's sophistry. But in fact, she is the only one who is seriously thinking. She is thinking according to the logic of philosophy and jurisprudence, and Kurt is "trusting" his own judgment according to the habits of the public and anger against the Nazis. In Arendt's view, "there is a huge gap between these unspeakable terrible behaviors and this person's mediocre knowledge."
(Please look forward to the next issue)