Aldof Eichmann's Conception Of The Banality Of Evil
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Throughout history there has been horrific tragedies, but one that will forever be the most horrific event in the history of humanity is the holocaust. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the article called “Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution,” Up to six million Jews, around seven million soviet civilians who are included in the six million figure for Jews, around three million Soviet prisoners of war which includes 50,000 Jewish Soldiers, around 1.8 million non-Jewish Polish civilians, which includes between 50,000 and 1000,000 members of Polish elites, 312,000 Serb civilians, 250,000 people with disabilities, between 196,000 to 220,000 Gypsies, around 1,900 Jehovah’s Witnesses, around…show more content… When one is evil they are fully chosing to do so, and to be banalty evil one does these “evil” acts to follow orders, not even questioning them. According to Arendent Aldof Eichmann is an example of this evil. Arendent uses the expression "the banality of evil" to describe Eichmann's actions as a Nazi regime member. In particular, his position as chief architect and executioner of Hitler's final solution for the Jewish problem. Arendent does not describe the word banal as ordinary or everyday actions. Rather it is meant to challenge the customary portrayals of the Nazi's inexplicable evils as having started from an indescribable will to do evil. As far as Arendt could distinguish, Eichmann came to his participation through a failure or absence of the abilities of complete thinking and judgment. Through Eichmann trials, Arendt determined that far from demonstrating a hatred of Jews, Eichmann was a harmless individual. He did not completely think about his actions. To him he was just following orders with no concern of their effects. Eichmann truly believed he did nothing wrong, and had no remorse for what he did. Eichman said, “With the killing of the Jews of I had nothing to do. I never killed a Jew or non-Jew, for that matter- I never killed any human being. I never gave an order to kill either a Jew, or a non-Jew; I just did not do it”(22). Arendt goes on to explain that Eichmann would…show more content… The presence of hatred was not the reason why Eichmann committed the genocide, but the lack of abilities that would have made the human and moral activities tangible for him. Eichmann was unable to exercise his ability of thinking, which would have allowed self-awareness of the evil nature of his acts. He did not belive what he was doing was evil by many other peoples definition, this within itself is why Arendt holds this as a worse eviel. According to Arendt, “Throughout the trial, Eichmann tried to clarify, mostly without success, this second point in his plea of “not guilty in the sense of the indictment.” The indictment implied not onoly that he had acted on purpose, which he did not deny, but out of base motives, he was perectly sure that he was not what he called an innerer Schweinehund, a dirty bastared in the depths oh his heart; and as for his conscience, he remembered perfectly well that he would have had a bad conscience only if he had not done what he been ordered to do” (25). He was ordered to ship men, women, children to their deaths through