Chapter eleven of Hannah Arendt’s Eichman in Jerusalem seeks to provide readers with some context when it comes to the topic of mass deportations of Jewish people from countries like Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania. Arendt goes into great detail about the processes and the political anecdotes which brought about the judenrein (deportation of Jewish people) of that country. While some countries like Denmark and Sweden sought to protect the rights of Jewish people by refusing the German’s commands, Arendt makes the claim that many other countries sought to do much worse than what the German had in store. One of such countries was Romania, which has had a long history of Jewish political strife. Arendt writes “In Rumania even the S.S. were taken aback, and occasionally frightened, by the horrors of old-fashioned, spontaneous pogroms on a gigantic scale; they often intervened to save Jews from sheer butchery, so that the killing could be done in what, according to them, was a civilized way” (Arendt 190). Arendt further goes into the tactics that the Romania’s would use to round up Jewish people for slaughter, including crowding Jewish people into “’two forests across the river bug,’ that is, into German-held Russian Territory, for liquidation” (Arendt 192). Upon hearing this, the Germans were taken aback and attempted to remind the Romanian government that the emigration of Jews back into Germany was more important than there misstep into the “Final Solution.” This would result in a number of disputes between the countries leaders. Until Romania eventually surrender to the Russia’s in nineteen forty-four.
Arendt’s goal in this chapter of her study on the Eichmann trial is to expose a line of reasoning which is similar to her theory of the banality of evil, which states that normal everyday people could be convinced to commit atrocities due to a willingness to refer to a chain of command and a structured career ladder. Arendt’s discussion on the S.S.’s dissatisfaction upon finding out about the Romanian’s treatment of Jewish people is used in her argument to justify her belief that Eichmann was not a extraordinary evil person. Her arguments in this book have been the topic of ripe discussion since its release, and it is important to remember that Arendt is not trying any anyway to justify or angelize Eichmann. Her goal is to explain how normal people can fall into committing seemingly evil deeds. Arendt uses Eichmann’s argument in this chapter as an example. Arendt states “His organizational gifts, the coordination of evaluations and deportations achieved by his office, had in fact helped his victims; it had made their fate easier” (190). While Arendt takes issue with this argument, she also sees some of the validity in it. Whether or not this completely justifies his actions is a whole other measure, because at the end of the day he participated in a process which killed millions of people. However he also saved them from a much more brutal death, despite there intentions to kill them anyways. It is a white spec of a deed surrounded in a pool of black.
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