It’s hard to rate this book because to read it is to immediately enter into the debate and controversy over it. A controversy, conversely, that I didn’t actually know anything about going into. The book is a reportage and essay series printed initially in The New Yorker during the months and subsequent years of the Eichmann trial in Israel. Eichmann was “arrested” in Argentina by Israeli nationals and brought back to Israel to stand on multiple counts. The arrest itself was not entirely sanctioned because he was not extradited or directly held by officials but more so kidnapped and brought back. This becomes a point of critique in Arendt’s book, not in that she criticizes the technique or suggests its illegitimacy, but more so acknowledges its exceptionalism. She discusses Eichmann as being essentially stateless within Argentina because he wasn’t a welcomed guest, a refugee, or an immigrant — he used a false name in exile, so his status is more complicated than any of these and also not beholden to clear legal status. She links this statelessness in ironic juxtaposition to the statelessness of deported Jews during the Third Reich.
The book itself does not spend its time functioning like a point by point reporting of the trial, instead focusing the evidence presented, alongside the additional evidence and records Arendt brings into it, and also discusses at length the philosophical and legal status, questions, and maneuvering of the legal apparatus that brought the trial to fruition. The book also begins with a long introduction and ends with a lengthy epilogue discussing additional reasoning on the various points.
You can also read about the controversy as well by looking into say the wikipedia page, but I am not going to wade into that here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
Regardless of my own sense of the book I was interested by the questions this book raised both in the critics and myself as I read through the various histories and arguments Arendt makes throughout.
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