Language:
English
Year of publication:
2013
Titel der Quelle:
AJS Review
Angaben zur Quelle:
37,1 (2013) 115-134
Keywords:
Arendt, Hannah,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Philosophy
;
History
Abstract:
The controversy surrounding Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem" since its publication in 1963 has become a text in itself, a destabilizing transatlantic text. It brought out the cultural divide between American intellectuals, with their universalizing and cosmopolitan perspectives, and those with an Eastern European background who were prone to an ethnically-grounded, nationalistic self-understanding. Thus, the controversy shattered a short-lived post-Holocaust Jewish unity. As a Jewish thinker with a north German, Reformist upbringing, Arendt did not conceive of the Holocaust as a sacred, mysterious event whose victims were part of a religious history of martyrdom, nor did she surrender to a cult of victimization. Her conception of the Holocaust as part of the collapse of values under totalitarianism is closer to the New Left discourse of the 1960s. Dismisses much of the criticism of "Eichmann in Jerusalem" as overstatements or as resulting from misreadings. Arendt did not justify Eichmann, but expanded the boundaries of guilt and responsibility by accusing the entire Nazi system. She did not lack love of the Jewish people, but rather refused to regard Jews as a nation and the Holocaust as an ethnic disaster. Her criticism was directed against many wartime West European Jewish leaders rather than only against "Ostjuden". Arendt remained alone in the controversy; even German Jewish refugees did not come to her defense.
DOI:
10.1017/S0364009413000068
URL:
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