Tag Archives: Adolf Eichmann

I Need to Figure Out the Recycling First

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I’ve been trying to get back into my writing. I just needed to acclimatize and stop scrolling so much. I’m in Poland now, which means there’s lots to figure out, including the recycling. They have different rules, different colors of bins and of course the language. I’ve been ignoring the accumulation of bottles and plastic even though I’ve seen the recycling machine at the supermarket. It looked easy enough, but I was intimidated and stayed in my funk.

Not quite this bad. But getting there.

It wasn’t just the recycling. I wasn’t going out to see anything either. I’d planned to visit the Tannenberg Memorial ruins where the Nazis had buried Hindenburg and made their speeches about getting East Prussia back. I’d reviewed it in the guidebooks, checked the train schedules and weather and planned to get there on Friday and then Monday. But I didn’t.

The Germans blew it up at the end of the war, but there’s apparently a few bricks left.

I can handle the food and laundry and distracted myself with the World Cup, even if was a dreadful bore. You’d think the Argentinians would try to be a tad more likable, given their Nazi-aligned past, but they’re so fully in with their racist taunts and hateful faces, it’s like Eichmann and Mengele are in the stands. Watching their questionable play doesn’t seem much different from the bombings in Kyiv and Iran, the Russian Invasion now longer than WWI, and Trump beetling on to WWIII. But I digress.

The Argentinains wouldn’t want try this nonsense against the Canadians.

I did work up the nerve to take in the cans – I’d run out of beer – and it was mostly a success, even if some were spat back and the cashier got irritated with me when I couldn’t explain to her why I had given her the receipt. I thought it was clear. And so now I have my beer, perogi too, and Spain has won. It’s true that I’m still scrolling, but Rage Against the Machine’s live Bulls on Parade might be my take-off point. I just need to watch it a few more times.

Bridget Anne Kelly: Hell Hath No Fury Like Middle Management

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New Jersey Governor Christie’s aid, Bridget Anne Kelly, is like so many other stuck at her level, always taking orders, never going anywhere. The stupid and spiteful act of the Fort Lee lane closures is typical of the bitter power-hungry people in middle management.Bridget Anne Kelly, Chris ChristieThese are the little bosses – the department heads and principals – the banal and evil ones, like the Third Reich’s Adolf Eichmann, who do everything within their power to ruin anyone in their range and pretend they were just following orders.eichmannThese are the nothings behind the failures of banks, health care websites and gun control legislation, the sad and lonely that stop traffic because they can.

Congressman Chabot

Congressman Chabot: “Serious concerns regarding gun control.”

And the worst thing is that we can do nothing about it unless they’re dumb enough to put it into print.email-512x327

Words as weapons: “Eichmann in Jerusalem”

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Hannah Arendt offers a devastating portrait of humanity in Eichmann in Jerusalem, an assemblage of five successive articles written in 1963 for The New Yorker. Words as weapons: "Eichmann in Jerusalem"It is in this work that Arendt coined the phrase, “the banality of evil”, positing that the mass murder perpetrated by the Nazis was not as much a thing of malevolence as it was of bureaucracy. She explains how words were used as weapons, to indoctrinate and then engineer the mass murders. Death camp architect Heinrich Himmler referred to the Holocaust as follows: “These are battles which future generations will not have to fight again.” Eichmann believed the “battles” to be geflugelte Worte (meaning “winged words” or words from classic literature), when in reality they were only the tools of propaganda.

Words as weapons: "Eichmann in Jerusalem"

Wagner’s “Ring Cycle”

In other words, not only does Eichmann not acknowledge the evil of his work, neither does he understand how the evil was disseminated. Arendt goes on to cite a story of a leader speaking to Bavarian peasants in 1944: “The Fuhrer in his goodness has prepared for the whole German people a mild death through gassing in case the war should have an unhappy end.”

Words as weapons: "Eichmann in Jerusalem"

Goebbels family – all of whom died of cyanide

Arendt’s text reveals how the people of Germany were indoctrinated as a cult, who were willing to go to the bitter end to satisfy their leader not out of malice but because “honor is loyalty”. Therefore it should not come as a surprise that Eichmann maintained his innocence in the extermination of millions; he and his Nazi brethren were gassed by their own words.

New York Inspired I: Hannah Arendt

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New York can be a distracting place, a tough environment to imagine isolation and
silence, which is where my head is supposed to be these days. That said, New York is a very good place to find inspiration from others. While the constant flow of art and ideas can be numbing, it can also fit pieces in the puzzle as well. Last week, we attended the closing night screening of the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center. The film was Hannah Arendt, an eponymous biopic directed by Margarethe von Trotta. hannah_01The narrative is strong, as is the setting and atmosphere – more cigarettes smoked than in a season of Mad Men – but most memorable are the philosophical musings of Ms. Arendt. Credited with developing the idea of “the banality of evil”, Ms. Arendt’s pursuit of understanding is ferocious.banalityShe argued that the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann was not so much an evil-minded villain as an unthinking bureaucrat only doing his job. Viewers of the film witness Ms. Arendt espouse her theories to attentive students, argue her points with colleagues, and most interesting of all, contemplate the complexities of humankind as she sits and smokes at home, staring into oblivion.  hannah-arendt1“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”