HUE AND CRY
85
belong, where it was "out of all proportion." To speak in the same
breath of the guilt of Eichmann and the guilt of the
Judenriite
seemed
offensive, like equating them; yet Miss Arendt never for one instant
equates them, and how could she assess the activities of Eichmann
while suppressing the part played by the Jewish leaders, with whom
his office constantly dealt?
When she writes her famous sentence (often distorted in quotation),
"To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their
own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story,"
she is expressing the same pain her Jewish readers felt in reading her
summary of that "dark chapter" and for which they are ready to
condemn her, as a tyrant used to condemn to death the messenger of
bad news. The "darkest chapter," incidentally, does not mean the worst;
it means the hardest to contemplate, for a Jew.
As for Abel's contention that she ought to have discussed the motives
and arguments of the Jewish leaders, she indicates that these motives
ranged from high to low, as one would expect. Abel's imagination,
he shows, was quite able
to
reconstruct the arguments that must have
taken place--a feat not beyond the power of the ordinary reader.
Possibly what some Jews feared was that though they themselves could
understand these motives, others (Gentiles?) might not. What many of
her critics hold against her is that she tries to understand Eichmann
and does not make the same effort for the Jewish leaders. But their
behavior is quite understandable, unlike that of the Nazis. They acted
the way most respectable citizens would; they temporized, tried not to
think the worst, looked for a formula that would placate the enemy.
The name of this in politics is appeasement. Miss Arendt, says Abel, does
not mention the middle-class character of the Jewish Councils. She
did not have to.
Abel claims that Miss Arendt blames the leadership for not having
resisted. She does not. The question of resistance is raised on pages
nine and ten of her book. Her conclusion is that resistance was impossible.
But between resistance and cooperation there was a small space in which
some action--or, rather, resolution-might have been taken. Miss Arendt
perhaps exaggerates the size of this space, and it must have varied from
country to country and town to town. The example she gives of the
Danish rabbi who called his people together, told them the truth, that
an order had gone out for their deportation, and ordered them to dis–
perse, no doubt would have been impossible to follow with success in
countries where the native population was hostile and physically and
culturally distinct from the Jews, but in some places, at some times, it