Language:
English
Year of publication:
2014
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of War & Culture Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
7,2 (2014) 133-146
Keywords:
Mulisch, Harry,
;
Arendt, Hannah,
;
Eichmann, Adolf,
;
War crime trials
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
The Dutch novelist Harry Mulisch (1927-2010) attended the Eichmann trial as a reporter and subsequently published a series of articles on it in the conservative weekly "Elsevier"; later his essays were published in book form as "The Case 40/61". From the trial, Mulisch drew the opinion that Eichmann was neither a believer in Hitler and his doctrine nor a born criminal; rather, he was a "machine man" who obeyed orders blindly. As such, Eichmann was a "symbol of progress", and stood for the "man in the mirror" - potentially, an Eichmann lived in everyone of us, therefore we were not entitled to judge him. The main lesson we could learn from the Eichmann case, according to Mulisch, was the necessity to doubt absolutes and to rebel. Mulisch's conception of Eichmann has much in common with Arendt's. However, for Arendt, a philosopher, the Eichmann case serves as a condemnation of our civilization, which could produce Eichmann, while Mulisch in his "The Case 40/61" remains a novelist, for whom this case is a warning to contemporary man, who was a "machine" and a potential murderer. Argues that Mulisch's account was pioneering in Europeanization of the Holocaust. He transferred the guilt for the genocide from a few major criminals to everyone - the man in the mirror, who was complicit in the Holocaust to a greater or lesser extent.
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