Language:
English
Year of publication:
2005
Titel der Quelle:
Holocaust Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
11,1 (2005) 27-54
Keywords:
Arendt, Hannah,
;
National socialism Philosophy
;
Nazi concentration camps
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Jews Persecutions 1933-1945
;
History
Abstract:
Historical research has shown that the portrait of Eichmann and his SS accomplices as banal bureaucrats, portrayed by Hannah Arendt in her "Eichmann in Jerusalem", does not correspond to reality. Her crucial claim was that the banality of ordinary bureaucrats is the key to understanding the dynamism, scope, and scale of the Holocaust. Arendt's great contribution to Holocaust research was to point out that it was modern organized society that produced the Holocaust. However, the Nazi officials in the higher echelons were conscious and eager perpetrators. Argues that, rather than those Nazis, it was "grey-collar workers" who constituted the bureaucracy of the genocide. Institutions like Auschwitz could never have functioned without countless prisoners who were forced to serve the Nazis. Those who survived provided a heretofore neglected source of knowledge on the functioning of the Holocaust machinery. Paying attention to them can potentially bring Holocaust studies closer to the reality of evil, rather than its banality.
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