The Eichmann in Us

The Eichmann in us:

We need not be a sadist, fanatic or mentally sick to commit crimes against humanity but the average qualities in us would suffice

By Leo Kee Chye

14/10/2014

Exactly 108 years ago from today Hannah Arendt was born and her extraordinary life and brilliance left a legacy of insights and questions ever more relevant today as was during her times.

A German Jew during the Second War World, prosecuted, suffered but survived and prevailed, Arendt’s life is nothing short of a miracle. Her penetrating intellectual theory into the political behaviour and establishment bequeathed us “totalitarianism” and “banality of evil”, what humanity are capable of if left unchecked.

A particular work by her, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, greatly disturbs my disposition and changes how I perceive us as human beings.

Adolf Eichmann, a lieutenant colonel, whose wartime role was largely to do with the logistical aspect of the forced emigration, deportation, evacuation and, towards the end of the war, the extermination of the Jewish people. After the war, he escaped to Argentine and lived there under an assumed name before he was kidnapped and arrested by Mossad, the secret police of Israel. He would be trial and hanged in Jerusalem. Hannah Arendt was present during the court proceeding and out of which came the book.

The book narrates the life and deeds of Eichmann and how he was directly involved in the greatest crime against humanity in the last century: the cold, systematic, deliberate liquidation of six millions Jews and others. How could anyone, a human being, is capable of such monstrous act, stooping so low in human conscience, perpetrating such depravity. If such enormity is beyond belief, Eichmann went further and beyond his own call of dutiful evil, disobeying his superior Heinrich Himmler during the closing end of war, by refusing to halt the further deportation of the Jews to their death camp. Eichmann kept the trains running right till to the last hour.

If that is not the ultimate embodiment of pure evil, or radical evil as suggested by Hannah, then he must be a very “sick” man. But Eichmann was found to be medically sane, his intellectual and reasoning faculty was not in any way diminished:

From the book: “A dozen psychiatrists had certified him as “normal” – “More normal, at any rate, than I am after having examined him,” one of them was said to have exclaimed, while another had found that his whole psychological outlook, his attitude toward his wife and children, mother and father, brothers, sisters, and friends, was “not only normal but most desirable” ”

I in fact secretly harbouring the thought that he could have certified to be mentally ill not lest I have any sympathy for him but wanting to hold on the faith that mankind in standing tall on his reason and conscience will never fall to such deplorable depth.

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was an American serial killer and sex offender, who committed the rape, murder and dismemberment of 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, was, before the trial, troubled by the whether he was just pure evil or he was plain sick. To his relief and consolation, after the trial, he was testified he was indeed sick not evil. He was vindicated.

My hope that human beings in standing tall with his reason and conscience was not vindicated but devastated.

However, maybe the morality of Eichmann could be easily explained away with pure evil and that he was devoid of even an iota of any remnant that remotely resemble conscience and empathy.

That argument was torn asunder with Eichmann arguing: “With the killing of Jews I had nothing to do. I never killed a Jew, or a non-Jew, for that matter – I never killed any human being. I never gave an order to kill either a Jew or a non-Jew; I just did not do it,” or, as he was later to qualify this statement, “It so happened . . . that I had not once to do it.”

He did not exhibit what we would commonly associate a sadist when he claim: “I cannot tell [how many Jews entered], I hardly looked. I could not; I could not; I had had enough. The shrieking, and . . . I was much too upset…then I saw the most horrible sight I had thus far seen in my life. The truck was making for an open ditch, the doors were opened, and the corpses were thrown out, as though they were still alive, so smooth were their limbs.” Eichmann preferred to detach himself from the bloody activities to the meditative desk of his office.

If he is not sick and he is not evil, what is him and what compel him to do what he did and to a level beyond his normal call of duty.

What disturbs and frightens me is not what Eichmann was but what he was not. He was not a fanatical Jews hater who wished nothing more than the total annihilation of the Jewish race. Nor was he a sadist who savours pleasure from the cruelty he inflicted on others. Nor was he certified to be mentally sick.

Nor even was he feared the reprisal, court marshalled or death arising from refusing to obey orders. According to the the Nuremberg documents “not a single case could be traced in which an S.S. member had suffered the death penalty because of a refusal to take part in an execution.”

Eichmann did what he had to do. He was merely doing his duty and at times beyond his call of duty in order to comply with the law. He was under oath to what the law required of him. According to his defense attorney, Eichmann had committed acts “for which you are decorated if you win and go to the gallows if you lose.”  In a similar proclamation by Joseph Goebbels in 1943, “We will go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all times or as their greatest criminals.”

This strikes me as especially disquieting was that morals no longer have its absolute conscience authority but merely a relative and a subjective feeling to the surrounding context. God is now dead and everything is permissible. Right is only right because that is the prerogative of the victors and wrong is surely wrong is relegated to the vanquished.

Surely that is not right and must be wrong. If this is the true, history will show us in every epoch there would be as many the most heinous atrocities as there were the most benevolent acts. Surely the law of probability will divide that up equally as the whims of nature divide the many males as the females. However we all know that is not the case.

During the trial, Eichmann was able to invoke the name of Immanuel Kant, reasoning how he kept to the categorical imperative which is to “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction'” Eichmann’s “perfect duties to the State are those that are blameworthy if not met, as they are a basic required duty for a human being.”

Although his interpretation of Kant’s moral is flawed, his extenuation shows he actually gave thoughts to his actions and they are not executed in spurs of the moment.

When preparing to enter his gallows, Eichmann remained unremorseful, with his last words as “Long live Germany. Long live Argentina. Long live Austria. These are the three countries with which I have been most connected and which I will not forget. I greet my wife, my family, and my friends. I am ready. We’ll meet again soon, as is the fate of all men. I die believing in God.”

What I fear and that perturb me enormously is that Eichmann is neither a fanatic, nor a sadist nor mentally sick. He is the average Joe like you and me. Eichmann does not seem to have any motive other than look out for his own advancement. If he was to do his “duty” and follow the “law”, will I not be another Eichmann if the same circumstances presented before me. His nonchalant or matter-of-fact shows another side of evil, the banality of evil. I would also use stoic evil

I see myself the same average qualities as Eichmann but I do not want to see conscience in me to collapse utterly if there is indeed a conscience in us all.

Our human mind is more malleable and plastic than previously has imagined and our behaviour is governed by our surrounding context than our conviction. The Milgram, Stanford Prison and the Good Samaritans experiment have revealed to us a dark recess of our heart if left unchecked will plunge us into the moral abyss.

In the past, I take console in the human race in Romans 7:15, “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.”

There seems in us an inner voice, conscience or whatever, which either reproaches us or consents us for deeds we do or we do not and for the thoughts we hold or hold not.

The perversion and inversion of Eichmann has changed Roman 7:15 to “For I understand my own actions. For I do what I want, but I try not to do the very thing I hate.” The inner voice has been deafened by the external edifice of institution and bureaucracy.

In the midst of global terrorism, although most of the perpetrators are fanatics who committed those atrocities seemingly in true conviction, in the name of their God and their religion. These fanatics, the sadists and the mentally ill are the minority. But the majority is the Eichmann in us all; will we be lured by the Pied Piper to the darkness into which we thought we will not fall prey. Are we able to resist that? Or will we be a passive accomplice.

For the world is not out of the woods yet, the danger ahead seems insurmountable. Modern fanatics only to look to the past to acquire the relevant paraphernalia to evoke out the Eichmann in us all. What then we have at our disposal to resist.

Only God knows and God helps us all.