La Banalità Del Male
Adolf Eichmann venne prelevato nel 1960 dai servizi segreti israeliani, trasportato dall’Argentina in Israele, per affrontare un processo per accuse come crimini contro l’umanità e crimini contro il popolo ebraico.
Hannah Harendt, politologa e storica tedesca di origine ebraiche, fuggita in America per le persecuzioni naziste, venne inviata in Israele per seguire i cinquantasei giorni di processo per conto del New Yorker. Notando poi le incongruenze dal punto di vista legale decise di approfondire l’argomento con questo saggio “Eichmann a Gerusalemme: resoconto sulla banalità del male”.
Infatti questo processo suscitò subito varie polemiche. Innanzitutto quello di Eichmann fu un vero e proprio rapimento e non un arresto, siccome avvenne all’insaputa del governo Argentino, il quale gli aveva inoltre concesso asilo politico. Inoltre Eichmann venne accusato per crimini contro l’umanità ma giudicato da un tribunale strettamente Israeliano. Per finire il giudizio della vittima da parte del carnefice venne considerato fuori da ogni diritto penale.
Il saggio si apre con una critica nei confronti del governo Israeliano. Dal punto di vista della scrittrice infatti il governo utilizzò questo processo come una sorta di sponsorizzazione del nuovo stato d’Isrlaele, indirizzata a tutti gli ebrei fuori dallo stato e un modo per mettere in cattiva luce i popoli arabi, in conflitto con gli Israeliani, ricordando la loro simpatia per il nazismo.
Arendt analizza poi la figura dell’imputato attraverso la storia della sua gioventù e poi della sua carriera nel partito, cercando di tracciare un profilo ben riconoscibile. Non un efferato criminale pronto a tutto in nome del Führer ma di un uomo semplice, poco intelligente, mosso per tutta la vita dal inerzia e capace di contare piuttosto che sulle sue capacità, sulle conoscenze per fare carriera.
La gioventù e i primi passi nel partito
Dopo una carriera scolastica deludente, Eichmann cominciò a lavorare come minatore presso la compagnia del padre, finché questi non riuscì a trovargli un lavoro presso un’azienda elettro tranviaria Austriaca. Successivamente venne inserito da suo zio nella compagnia petrolifera Vacuum.
Entrò nel partito nazista nel 1932 su consiglio di un amico, perché svogliato dal lavoro, a suo dire, ed effettivamente non lesse mai il Mein Kampf e al epoca non conosceva nulla del partito. Un anno dopo perse il suo lavoro e inoltre il partito nazista venne messo al bando, così Eichmann decise di tornare in Germania.
Spinto da un generale entrò nel servizio di sicurezza delle SS (RSHA), lavorando prima sulla raccolta di informazioni sui massoni per poi venire trasferito al corrispondente ufficio ebraico. Qui si interessò alla questione ebraica leggendo il suo primo libro, Lo Stato Ebraico, di Theodor Herzl, imparando poi l’yiddish e informandosi sul sionismo. Si fece così una piccola cultura che lo portò a compiti più “importanti”, occupandosi infatti dell’emigrazione forzata degli ebrei fuori dai territori occupati fino al 1941, quando i treni cominciarono ad essere diretti verso i campi di concentramento. In particolare si occupava di requisire treni e pianificava gli spostamenti in base alla capacità dei campi di concentramento. Il suo primo incarico fu il trasporto di 7 mila ebrei verso un campo francese, arrivando poi ad occuparsi dopo il 1944 al trasporto di tutti gli ebrei situati in Ungheria dopo la sua invasione, arrivando a caricare sui treni più di 700 mila persone, 437 mila vennero uccisi non appena scesi.
Il processo
fu chiaro fin da subito l’intento dell’accusa: non volevano solo occuparsi delle orribili azioni che Eichmann fece ma operare una disanima generale dell’antisemitismo nazista. Questa manovra era quanto mai chiara nella scelta dei testimoni. Infatti la stragrande maggioranza di essi mai avevano visto Eichmann in vita loro, ma comunque venne loro data possibilità di parlare delle atrocità che avevano vissuto.
Più volte la corte si vide costretta a difendere Eichmann stesso per le esagerazioni delle colpe che l’accusa gli conferiva, ma quello non fu il primo tribunale dove le sue colpe vennero gonfiate. Infatti durante il processo di Norimberga molti altri criminali scaricarono le loro colpe Eichmann pensandolo morto, in realtà si nascondeva sotto il nome di Ricardo Klement.
Di certo non fu questo un processo corretto da molti punti di vista, ma l’autrice volle sottolineare come i giudici scelti per il processo non mostrarono mai ingiustizia nei confronti dell’accusato, per quanto la loro fosse una posizione complicata. Venne giudicato secondo la legge del 1950 che puniva i collaboratori nazisti colpevole di crimini contro l’umanità, contro il popolo ebraico e di altri 13 crimini ma venne riconosciuto colpevole di aver reso solo possibile lo sterminio, non di averlo perpetrato. Il 15 dicembre del 1961 venne condannato a morte per impiccagione.
Cosa significa banalità?
L’intento della scrittrice non è di suggerire che in ognuno di noi vi è un possibile Adolf Eichmann e nemmeno sminuire con questo termine la crudeltà che quel uomo dimostrò per tutta la sua carriera nel partito.
Quando Hannah Arendt vide per la prima volta quel famigerato criminale non vide nessun segno che suggerisse il male che potesse compiere. Non sembrava un omicida, uno psicopatico ma una persona normalissima, apparve addirittura noioso alla scrittrice.
Capì così che la vera minaccia data dai regimi totalitari diventava chiarissima in Adolf Eichmann. Un uomo normale, senza essere mosso da folli teorie naziste, ma puramente dalla sua volontà di emergere e uscire dalla mediocrità che sentiva addosso, divenne capace di compiere gesti orribili senza pensare alle conseguenze. I personaggi più pericolosi non sono gli indottrinati, ma le persone banali, le più zelanti e fredde, anche quando si tratta di portare alla morte 725 mila persone come nel caso del Ungheria.
“Non era stupido: era semplicemente senza idee (una cosa molto diversa dalla stupidità), e tale mancanza di idee ne faceva un individuo predisposto a divenire uno dei più grandi criminali di quel periodo”
Si spaventò ancora di più quando vide come il rimorso e la colpa erano totalmente privi in quel uomo, che si sentiva addirittura un salvatore del popolo ebraico, avendo permesso l’emigrazione di milioni di persone. Sembrava distorcere e dimenticare intere parti della sua vita e la sua cronica mancanza di memoria lo condannerà a non poter mai controbattere seriamente alle accuse: egli ricordava solo i propri successi personali, i suoi stati d’animo e le frasi fatte ad essi collegate: ricorderà tutte le sue quattro promozioni tra il 1937 e il 1941, e l’arrivo al ruolo di comandante del centro per l’emigrazione berlinese. D’altra parte era lo stesso uomo che assistendo ad un’esecuzione rischiò di svenire nel campo di concentramento di Majdanek e che si rifiutò poi sempre di visitare altri campi di concentramento per quanto ne fu sconvolto, anche se in parte era il colpevole del orrore che aveva visto quel giorno. Ê in questa distorsione della realtà che l’autrice vede a genesi del male, la capacità di trasformare le persone in meri ingranaggi che non si sentono responsabili di quel che stanno facendo.
Hannah Arendt ricevette da subito svariate critiche per il suo lavoro, accolto come una giustificazione verso tutti i nazisti. Riuscì a liberarsi di questa interpretazione solo svariati anni dopo, quando si smise di incolpare il popolo tedesco come corrotto e unico colpevole del Olocausto.
A report of the banality of evil
Hannah Arendt tried to resolve a difficult question when she went to Israel to report the trial of Adolph Eichmann for The New Yorker in 1961. She followed the process for all the 56 days, but she didn’t recognize in the Nazi criminal any sign of cruelty or depravation. He was just an ordinary bureaucrat, even boring in her opinion, but he was a murdered who caused the death of millions of Jewish. Even if Eichmann admitted to not liking the Jews and viewing them as adversaries, but stated that he never thought their annihilation was justified. So if he wasn’t indoctrinated with the Nazi ideas, how he could kill so many people, can one do evil without being evil? That’s the difficult question that A report of the banality of evil try to resolve.
How was Adolf Eichmann?
After an unremarkable school career, Eichmann worked as a travelling oil salesman, and joined both the Nazi Party and the SS in 1932. A few months after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in January 1933, Eichmann lost his job due to staffing cutbacks at Vacuum Oil. The Nazi Party was banned in Austria around the same time. These events were factors in Eichmann’s decision to return to Germany in 1933, where he joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, “Security Service”). Even himself was astonished when, for his knowledge of Yiddish, he was regarded as an expert of Jewish matters. For this reason he was appointed head of the forced emigration of Jewish. After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Eichmann and his staff arranged for Jews to be concentrated in ghettos in major cities with the expectation that they would be transported either farther east or overseas. He also drew up plans for a Jewish reservation, first at Nisko in southeast Poland and later in Madagascar, but neither of these plans were ever carried out. The Nazis began the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and their Jewish policy changed from emigration to extermination. Eichmann and his staff became responsible for Jewish deportations to extermination camps, where the victims were gassed. Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, and Eichmann oversaw the deportation of much of the Jewish population. Most of the victims were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, where about 75 per cent were murdered upon arrival. By the time that the transports were stopped in July 1944, 437,000 of Hungary’s 725,000 Jews had been killed
Eichmann was taken to a fortified police station in Israel, where he spent nine months. The Israelis were unwilling to take him to trial based solely on the evidence in documents and witness testimony, so the prisoner was subject to daily interrogations, the transcripts of which totaled over 3,500 pages. Inspector Less noted that Eichmann did not seem to realize the enormity of his crimes and showed no remorse. His pardon plea, released in 2016, did not contradict this: “There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders”, Eichmann wrote. “I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.”
Eichmann’s trial before a special tribunal of the Jerusalem District Court began on 11 April 1961. The legal basis of the charges against Eichmann was the 1950 Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, under which he was indicted on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership in a criminal organization. The trial was presided over by three judges: Moshe Landau, Benjamin Halevy and Yitzhak Raveh. The defense team consisted of German lawyer Robert Servatius, legal assistant Dieter Wechtenbruch, and Eichmann himself as foreign lawyers had no right of audience before Israeli courts at the time of Eichmann’s capture, Israeli law was modified to allow those facing capital charges to be represented by a non-Israeli lawyer. Justice Minister Pinchas Rosen stated:
“I think that it will be impossible to find an Israeli lawyer, a Jew or an Arab, who will agree to defend him”, and thus a foreign lawyer would be necessary.
The prosecution case was presented over the course of 56 days, involving hundreds of documents and 112 witnesses (many of them Holocaust survivors); only 14 of the witnesses called had seen Eichmann during the war. Hausner’s intention was to not only demonstrate Eichmann’s guilt but to present material about the entire Holocaust. Hausner’s opening address began:
“It is not an individual that is in the dock at this historic trial and not the Nazi regime alone, but anti-Semitism throughout history.”
Defense attorney Servatius repeatedly tried to curb the presentation of material not directly related to Eichmann, and was mostly successfulEichmann’s trial judges Benjamin Halevy, Moshe Landau, and Yitzhak RavehIn his testimony throughout the trial, Eichmann insisted he had no choice but to follow orders, as he was bound by an oath of loyalty to Hitler—the same superior orders defense used by some defendants in the 1945–1946 Nuremberg trials. Eichmann asserted that the decisions had been made not by him, but by Müller, Heydrich, Himmler, and ultimately Hitler. As a clear decision to exterminate had been made by his superiors, the matter was out of his hands; he felt absolved of any guilt. On the last day of the examination, he stated that he was guilty of arranging the transports, but he did not feel guilty for the consequences.
Throughout his cross-examination, prosecutor Hausner attempted to get Eichmann to admit he was personally guilty, but no such confession was forthcoming. Eichmann admitted to not liking the Jews and viewing them as adversaries, but stated that he never thought their annihilation was justified. The trial adjourned on 14 August, and the verdict was read on 12 December. Eichmann was convicted on 15 counts of crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership in a criminal organization. The judges declared him not guilty of personally killing anyone and not guilty of overseeing and controlling the activities of the Einsatzgruppen. He was deemed responsible for the dreadful conditions on board the deportation trains and for obtaining Jews to fill those trains. In addition to being found guilty of crimes against Jews, he was convicted for crimes against Poles, Slovenes and Gypsies. Moreover, Eichmann was found guilty of membership in three organizations that had been declared criminal at the Nuremberg trials: the Gestapo, the SD, and the SS. On 15 December 1961, Eichmann was sentenced to death by hanging.
Hannah Arendt observation
common thought at the time was that only the Germans could carry out similar atrocities, all European country and in particular Jews considered Germans corrupted, violent and the only reason why the war broke up.
The point of view of the philosopher was completely different, in fact in the book she introduced the expression and concept of the banality of evil. Her thesis is that Eichmann was actually not a fanatic or a sociopath, but instead an extremely average and mundane person who relied on cliché defences rather than thinking for himself, and was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology. Banality, in this sense, does not mean that Eichmann’s actions were in any way ordinary, or even that there is a potential Eichmann in all of us, but that his actions were motivated by a sort of stupidity which was unexceptional. Eichmann was a “joiner” his entire life, in that he constantly joined organizations in order to define himself, and had difficulties thinking for himself without doing so. As a youth, he belonged to the YMCA, the Wandervogel. In 1933, he failed in his attempt to join the Schlaraffia at which point a family friend Ernst Kaltenbrunner encouraged him to join the SS. At the end of World War II, Eichmann found himself depressed because “it then dawned on him that thenceforward he would have to live without being a member of something or other”. Arendt pointed out that his actions were not driven by malice, but rather blind dedication to the regime and his need to belong, to be a joiner. In his own words:
“I sensed I would have to live a leaderless and difficult individual life, I would receive no directives from anybody, no orders and commands would any longer be issued to me, no pertinent ordinances would be there to consult—in brief, a life never known before lay ahead of me.”
Eichmann’s inability to think for himself was exemplified by his consistent use of “stock phrases and self-invented clichés”. The man demonstrated his unrealistic worldview and lack of communication skills through reliance on “officialese”. Maybe his reliance on orders was a symptom of his lack of intelligence (we spoke about his inability of finish high school). During his imprisonment before his trial, the Israeli government sent no fewer than six psychologists to examine Eichmann. These psychologists found no trace of mental illness, including personality disorder. One doctor remarked that the only unusual trait Eichmann displayed was being more “normal” in his habits and speech than the average person. Arendt suggests that this discredits the idea that the Nazi criminals were manifestly psychopathic and different from “normal” people. From this document, many concluded that situations such as the Holocaust can make even the most ordinary of people commit horrible crimes with the proper incentives, but Arendt adamantly disagreed with this interpretation, as Eichmann was voluntarily following the Führerprinzip. Arendt insists that moral choice remains even under totalitarianism, and that this choice has political consequences even when the chooser is politically powerless.
ARTICOLO DI RICCARDO TRICARICO DELLA CLASSE V A DEL LICEO CLASSICO
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