Reviews with content warning for Genocide - Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

It took me an embarrassing long time to actually finish this book (around a month, although I annotated it all) but I actually found it to be an extremely interesting read once I got the hang of it. It's really compelling from a psychological viewpoint because it analyzes the mind of Adolph Eichmann and National-Socialists and delves deep into what it really means for evil to be banal, without subtracting the fault out of it. It also allowed me to expand my knowledge on the events of the war and the politics of it, so now I feel like I have a better understanding of that time period. If interested in the topic or even if it's an academic demand (as was mine), I really encourage whoever to read it, you won't regret it.

Content Warnings

megb64's review

Go to review page

challenging dark slow-paced

3.0

Content Warnings

linneak's review

Go to review page

challenging dark informative slow-paced

3.5

Content Warnings

apersonfromflorida's review

Go to review page

dark informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

Content Warnings

heyitsgiulia's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

To really understand why I loved this book it's important, in my opinion, saying that I studied law and this book, before portraying the story of a nazi criminal, for me it was the story of a trial. I found so interesting the author point of view, especially I appreciated how she remained objectively critical towards the trial, without getting carried away by sentimentality. This is even more impressive if we think that we are talking about criticizing a trial towards a nazi criminal by a Jewish author. That said, I would suggest this book to everyone, because it's important to understand how simple is hiding ourself behind lies, believing that we are doing something good only because someone else is telling us that we are. In our everyday life we should think more about our actions and how these actions can impact the life of other people and our world, because, most of the times, our action have a huge impact on other's lives, even if we don't see it directly.

Content Warnings

zakcebulski's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

Rarely am I hit by a book in such a tangible way as I was while reading this book.
This book was absolutely frightening as it discussed how truly evil people can be the most boring, tepid, insipid fucks that have ever walked the Earth. But, if they haven't the ability to question the orders which they are given, they are capable of unspeakable horrors.
This book was highly fascinating, teaching me about the true impact which Adolf Eichmann had on the Holocaust, and how, without him and those like him, the Holocaust would largely have occurred differently and not to the level which it reached.
This book is tragic, it is heart wrenching, it is soul numbing. To think about the true impact of dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions of lives all wiped away by a bunch of people who high command was comprised of a bunch of failures, is sickening.
I can say that though I did not comprehend everything in this book, and stand to learn and remember much, much more upon subsequent re-reads, this was a book that I am glad to have read. It is important to read books that describe the atrocities in which humans inflict on one another in hopes that we can learn from history lest we repeat it.
I cannot give this book a rating, but, I do highly recommend anyone to read it. It is insightful, moving, and terrifying when you think about how the most sub-average stooge is able to inflict so much misery and pain on the world. It changes your perspective on things a good bit.
The last paragraph is some of the most poignant writing I have had the pleasure of reading this year.
#FuckEichmann #FuckNazis

Content Warnings

paulklesh's review

Go to review page

informative reflective slow-paced

3.25

Content Warnings

aehc's review

Go to review page

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

This is a classic for a reason. Arendt's unflinching account of the Eichmann trial cuts to the heart of the question that looms large over retrospective looks at the Holocaust: how did seemingly normal people participate in, aid, and abet one of the most horrifying events in human history? Arendt's answer, embodied in her portrayal of Eichmann, is that ethical standards and normal behavior are set by a society and that when a society's ethics break down, most people are perfectly willing to go along with it. Of course, this did not happen overnight, and it would not have happened if violent anti-semitism was not already common and socially accepted in Europe. However, I think that Arendt's argument is now more relevant than ever, both for individual contemplation about how we commit to our own moral and ethical standards and, more broadly, how the international community should respond to actions committed by individuals working within the apparatus of a "criminal state" that are not themselves violent but make profound violence possible.

Arendt has been criticized for her characterization of Eichmann as non-ideologically motivated, when some evidence suggests that he was in fact a virulent anti-semite. I ultimately do not think that these facts undercut Arendt's argument; whether Eichmann was truly a banal paper-pusher or a true believer, he was portraying himself as a non-ideologue and on some level believed that that would make his actions less reprehensible. The fundamentals of Arendt's argument - that people who were not ideologically committed to Nazism were instrumental to its success, and that their internal motivations are at best irrelevant and in some ways worse than those of an ideologue - remain unchanged.

This book is dry - especially at the beginning - but to me that serves only to magnify the dissonance between Eichmann's logistical duties and his concern with his status, and the atrocities he was crafting at his desk. Arendt’s use of some of the dehumanizing Nazi language is very rhetorically effective and, as I’m sure she intended, profoundly disturbing. This is one of the most disturbing books I've read in a very, very long while. I will not stop thinking about it for some time.

Content Warnings

More...