Eichmann in Jerusalem

Introduction

Arendt attended the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem for The New Yorker, which published her report in five instalments in early 1963; the book appeared that May and was expanded with a postscript in 1964. She depicts Eichmann not as a fanatical antisemite but as a careerist who spoke in clichés and seemed unable to think from anyone else’s standpoint. Her remarks on the role of the Jewish councils in the deportations caused a bitter controversy; Gershom Scholem accused her of lacking love for the Jewish people. Later research on Eichmann’s own writings and interviews from his Argentine exile has questioned her picture of him.

Connections

Builds on

• The Origins of Totalitarianism1951 · Hannah Arendt

Taken up in

• The Life of the Mind1978 · Hannah Arendt
• Modernity and the Holocaust1989 · Zygmunt Bauman

More works by Hannah Arendt

• 1951The Origins of Totalitarianism
• 1958The Human Condition
• 1978The Life of the Mind

Appears in

• Journey ‘Thinking after Auschwitz’ · Stop 4 of 10