Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a nonfiction book by political theorist Hannah Arendt, originally published in 1963.

In 1961, Arendt went to Jerusalem to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker, an assignment she gave herself because “she felt she simply had to attend the trial; she owed it to herself as a social critic, displaced person, witness, and survivor” (xi). Eichmann, a Nazi facilitator of the Holocaust, had been hiding under a false identity in Buenos Aires when the Israelis captured him and brought him to trial in Jerusalem.

Arendt's authoritative report on Eichmann’s trial includes additional factual material that comes to light after the trial, as well as Arendt's postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her articles and book. The central objections to her reportage are namely that first, she paints Eichmann as a “terrifyingly normal” man who simply wanted to do well in his position rather than the evil, calculating monster the public needed him to be; and, second, that Arendt challenges the role of the Jewish leaders in helping to keep the evacuations to death camps orderly.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ben-Gurion wants to make an example of Eichmann, teaching all who witness the trial that not solely Germany is responsible for the atrocities that befell the Jewish people during the war.