It is amazing that at his trial, Eichmann claimed not to feel responsible for the death of anyone is solely under the pretext boggling, he would have killed anyone with his own hands (which remains demonstrate).
For him, the fact, as he said, of "aiding and abetting" the extermination of MILLIONS of people, does not come within its own responsibility.
According to Eichmann, he was only doing his "duty", he obeyed orders, and so there was no CONSCIENCE her problem.
"Arguments" of course, totally unacceptable given the magnitude of the FACTS and ... MORAL!
The only way he found grotesque in his defense, was to LIE shamelessly.
Indeed, his only defense strategy was to aberrant any blanket denial when he was accused of being one of the main organizers and managers of the horror was, "The final solution of the Jewish question. "
Here's what he dared declare during his trial, page 75:
"I had nothing to do with the killing of Jews I never killed a Jew or indeed a non-Jew -.. I never killed any human being I never ordered that one kills a Jew or a Gentile. I have simply not done. "
What Eichmann therefore possibly accept (what for him seemed surprisingly not serious), was to be "just" guilty of the crimes listed on page 430:
"It should be recalled that Eichmann had steadfastly said that he was guilty of having" aided and abetted "the execution of the crimes of which he was accused, he had never personally committed a manifest crime. "
Hannah Arendt suggests that it was locked in a mental pattern of "self-deception", by lying to himself to shirk its own responsibility.
So, "self-deception" AND / OR simply, well-considered ignoble trick to try to lessen the degree of responsibility?
For indeed, at the end of the war the same executioner, Eichmann boasted to the SS, for having made use of the main perpetrators of this barbarism, pages 113 and 114:
"I'll jump into my grave laughing because it's an extraordinary satisfaction for me to have on his conscience the death of five million Jews" (or "enemies of the Reich", that is what he always claimed to have said). "
Given the immensity of the crimes, the Court wisely considering that it was not a crime "ordinary", so the judgment fell on overall responsibility for Eichmann in his gigantic Crimes against Humanity and Genocide , page 430 and 431:
"Considering its activities in the light of Article 23 of our Criminal Code, we believe that they were essentially those of a person soliciting the advice of others, or giving advice to others, and a person who helped others or allow them to perform criminal acts. " But "as the crime in question is so huge and complex, it involved the participation of a large number of people at different levels and in different ways - the authors of plans, organizers, performers, each according to his rank - there is little point to appeal to ordinary notions of advice given or solicited in the commission of the crime because these crimes were committed en masse, not only from the standpoint of the number of victims, but also the point. of the number of those who perpetrated the crime and, in terms of the degree of responsibility of one of the many criminals whatever it is, its greater or lesser distance from one who actually killed the victim does say anything. On the contrary, in general the degree of responsibility increases as one moves away from the man who handles the fatal instrument with his own hands. "
What is certain is that Eichmann was neither crazy nor stupid, but a "normal" individual, totally devoid of any moral conscience, incapable of distinguishing between good and evil; what is expressed perfectly Hannah Arendt, page 495:
"He was not stupid It is pure absence of thought -. Which is not the same as stupidity. - Which allowed him to become one of the greatest criminals of his time"
Then, still on page 495:
"That may be so remote from reality at this point devoid of thought, as it may do more harm than all the evil instincts which together may be inherent to man - that was indeed the lesson you could learn to Jerusalem. But it was a lesson that was not an explanation of the phenomenon nor a theory about that. "
As for Rudolf Hoess Commandant of Auschwitz and Franz Stangl Commander of Treblinka extermination center, there is the absence of Eichmann in madness pathological sense, because it was perfectly determined to fulfill the orders and missions entrusted to him regarding the "Final Solution."
He was ambitious even zealous in carrying out his infamous "mission" extermination.
Moreover, he felt both a great contempt and total indifference to HUMAN LIFE. This is what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of EVIL."
It is not reassuring to say that any time (past, present, future) of men are able to experience consciously, indifference or a certain jubilation in the annihilation of OTHERS. And when these men find themselves in positions of responsibility in Totalitarian regimes, then they are capable of exterminating untold masses of individuals!
It is also frightening to see that Eichmann, Hoess of, of Stangl, etc .., numbered thousands in Germany, the ORDER of the Third Reich of Hitler during the Second World War. Certainly, to less important positions, but however, it is these butchers who were responsible for the dirty work consisting massacring whole populations, eg, exterminators SS battalions (Einsatzgruppen).
As for the "passivity" of part of the German people (as in France for that matter, under the Vichy government) in the policy of the Third Reich, it belongs to another great debate ...
Eichmann was sentenced to death December 15, 1961 and May 31, 1962 hanged.
Confer also other as exciting books on the same theme of:
- Gitta Sereny: Deep Dark: An executioner speaks: Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka;
- Tzvetan Todorov: Memory of evil, temptation of the property: investigation of the century;
- Tzvetan Todorov: FACING THE EXTREME. Edition 1994;
- Rudolf Hoess: The Auschwitz commander speaks;
- Hannah Harendt: The totalitarian system: The Origins of Totalitarianism;
- Shlomo Venezia Sonderkommando: In the hell of the gas chambers;
- David Rousset: The concentration camp universe;
- Primo Levi: Survival In Auschwitz;
- Primo Levi: The Drowned and the Survivors: Forty years after Auschwitz;
- Michel Terestchenko: A fragile humanity varnish: Banality of evil banality of good.
