{"id":1284,"date":"2016-10-27T15:35:37","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T15:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/?p=1284"},"modified":"2016-10-27T18:18:09","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T18:18:09","slug":"controversy-in-eichmann-in-jerusalem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/2016\/10\/27\/controversy-in-eichmann-in-jerusalem\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversy in Eichmann in Jerusalem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ROSER

Source: Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team<\/p><\/div>\n

Among the many controversial aspects of Hannah Arendt\u2019s Eichmann in Jerusalem<\/em>, which originally appeared as a multi-part series in The New Yorker,<\/em> the most incendiary points she made appeared in chapter VII. In that section of the book, entitled \u201cThe Wannsee Conference, or Pontius Pilate,\u201d Arendt took to task Jewish leaders who served on the Jewish Councils, or Judenrat<\/em><\/a>, for \u201ccooperating\u201d with the Nazis by, among other things, providing lists of names of those to be deported to the death camps.\u00a0 Arendt wrote that\u00a0 she \u201cdwelt on this chapter of the story…because it offers the most striking insight into the totality of the coral collapse the Nazis caused in respectable European society.\u201d (p. 124).<\/p>\n

The role Jewish leaders had played had been an issue at the trial, although it was not the first time that the matter had been discussed. As Arendt noted, Raul Hilberg, whose work Arendt relied heavily on in her report, had exposed it \u201cfor the first time in all its pathetic and sordid detail\u201d in his comprehensive history, The Destruction of the European Jews, <\/em>published in 1961. (p. 118)<\/p>\n

Was it Arendt\u2019s \u201ctone\u201d of biting sarcasm, evidenced repeatedly in the book that ratcheted up the degree of negative criticism she received? Should she have been more empathetic to the plight of those Jewish leaders confronted with such a terrible dilemma? These and other issues will surely occupy us in our conversations during the seminar. For now, I wanted to share some materials from Arendt\u2019s archived papers in the Library of Congress to give you a sense of the range of responses she got from some readers who felt either relieved or condemned by her words. (For those of you interested in archival research, or who might use it as a source of inspiration for your seminar projects, I highly recommend exploring the Hannah Arendt Papers in the Library of Congress<\/a>, partially accessible online). The letters below excerpted from those archives come from the Correspondence—Miscellaneous—English language—D-F—1963-1965 (Series: Adolf Eichmann File, 1938-1968, n.d.).<\/p>\n

To give one \u201cpositive\u201d example, the noted advocate of nonviolent social change, Barbara Demming<\/a>, who had met Arendt one evening at Ticino\u2019s, an Italian Restaurant in Greenwich Village, New York, which I used to frequent in the 1970s (sadly, no longer there!) wrote Arendt, praising\u00a0 the book.<\/p>\n

\"Deming<\/p>\n

\"Deming<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But, of course, not all responses were supportive. Among others, Arendt had cited the testimony of Pinchas Freudiger, who was the former Baron Philip von Freudiger, of Budapest to illustrate \u201cthe cooperation between the Nazi rulers and the Jewish authorities.\u201d(p. 124) After reading her book, Freudiger wrote an extended response to Arendt.<\/p>\n

Freudiger Letter to HA, p. 1<\/a>,\u00a0Freudiger Letter to HA, p.2<\/a>,Freudiger Letter to HA, p. 3<\/a>,\u00a0Freudiger Letter to HA, p. 4<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is Arendt’s reply:<\/p>\n

HA to Freudiger<\/a><\/p>\n

Looking forward to sharing these materials in our seminar discussions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the many controversial aspects of Hannah Arendt\u2019s Eichmann in Jerusalem, which originally appeared as a multi-part series in The New Yorker, the most incendiary points she made appeared in chapter VII. In that section of the book, entitled \u201cThe Wannsee Conference, or Pontius Pilate,\u201d Arendt took to task Jewish leaders who served on the Jewish Councils, or Judenrat, for \u201ccooperating\u201d with the Nazis by, among other things, providing lists of names of those to be deported to the death camps.\u00a0 Arendt wrote that\u00a0 she \u201cdwelt on this chapter of the story…because it offers the most striking insight into the totality of the coral collapse the Nazis caused in respectable European society.\u201d (p. 124). The role Jewish leaders had played had been an issue at the trial, although it was not the first time that the matter had been discussed. As Arendt noted, Raul Hilberg, whose work Arendt relied heavily on in her report, had exposed it \u201cfor the first time in all its pathetic and sordid detail\u201d in his comprehensive history, The Destruction of the European Jews, published in 1961. (p. 118) Was it Arendt\u2019s \u201ctone\u201d of biting sarcasm, evidenced repeatedly in the book that ratcheted up the degree….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,115,8,9,10,11,110,13,19,20,24,25,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banality-of-evil","category-barbara-demming","category-eichmann-in-jerusalem","category-eichmann-trial","category-ethics","category-evil","category-genocide","category-hannah-arendt","category-jewish-councils","category-judenrat","category-neh-summer-scholars","category-personal-responsibility","category-raul-hilberg"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1284"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1305,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions\/1305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}