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LIONEL ABEL
LIONEL ABEL
SIRS:
Since I believe Miss Hannah Arendt has been shown to
be
wrong in her judgment of the Jewish leadership, and since I think Miss
McCarthy's arguments in defense of Miss Arendt's position on this
matter quite worthless, I shall not answer them, being content to refer
readers to my original article. I cannot refrain, however, from meeting
some of the points Miss McCarthy made in defense of Miss Arendt's
portrait of Eichmann. For while there are few who are now willing to
accept Miss Arendt on the Jewish councils, there are still many who
support her on Eichmann. Moreover I believe Miss Arendt's misjudgment
of Eichmann-for that is how I prefer to designate her view of him-is
even dearer to her than her misjudgment of the Jewish leaders.
What was Eichmann really like? He did not talk only in cliches.
Certainly his remark, "I will jump into my grave laughing, etc.," is
hardly a cliche. Who, before Eichmann, ever said anything like that?
Eichmann was not lacking in personal arrogance. He challenged as ex–
alted a personage as the SS general Kurt Wolff to a duel merely for
breaking off a telephone conversation. (The cause of their quarrel was
the SS general's request that Eichmann spare the life of a single
Jew.) Was Eichmann normal? Miss McCarthy says there were six
psychiatrists who pronounced him normal. I should like to know
the name of even one of these psychiatrists. But I do know the name
of one psychiatrist who did not call Eichmann normal-Szondi, in–
ventor of the famous Szondi test, which was given Eichmann in Jerusa–
lem. Not knowing
to
whom the test had been given, Szondi, analyzing
its results, asserted that the subject [Eichmann] was "a man obsessed
with a dangerous and insatiable urge to kill, arising out of a desire for
power." Eichmann was not an ordinary man, with the ordinary man's
conscience-and lack of conscience. Eichmann was morally monstrous.
To say this, of course, is not to state a fact, but to make an interpreta–
tion of the facts. My claim, though, is that the facts about Eichmann
impose this interpretation on us. Surely it is our duty-as well as our
right-to regard as essential in Eichmann's life what he himself made
essential in his conduct of it. And nobody denies what his significant
acts as a Nazi were, or that these acts were, morally speaking, monstrous.
Was Eichmann personally brutal, vicious, sadistic? I suspect so, but I
do not have to assert that he was. It will be recalled that Jean-Paul
Sartre in the famous portrait he gave of the anti-Semite did not ascribe
