Missed Opportunity
MEISTER, ROBERT
Missed Opportunity AND THE CROOKED SHALL BE MADE STRAIGHT The Eichmann Trial, the Jewish Catastrophe, and Hannah Arendt's Narrative. By Jacob Robinson Macmillan. 406 pp. $6.95. Reviewed...
...It is a reasonable guess that had the book been written by a newspaper reporter its reception would have been far less spectacular, and that Miss Arendt's reputation was decisive in provoking the storm...
...Miss Arendt's journalistic caper hardly demanded a 406-page correction...
...If one, for example, prefers to accept Miss Arendt's theory of Eichmann's character, he can find documents as persuasive as Robinson's...
...It cannot possibly occur to Robinson that the real significance of this particular matter lies not in the exact number of Weisses reaching Portugal but in one of the documents, a simple, lowly AP dispatch intercepted by the German legation in Lisbon and transmitted to the German Foreign Office: "AP 26 June 1944...
...The corrections and amendments of Miss Arendt's facts appear minor and in many cases inadequately supported: their importance lies in confirmine her continued dependence on secondary sources, agsravated in this case by careless preparation and writing...
...His devotion to exact figures is so complete that in pursuing them he is incapable of recognizing what is truly significant...
...etc., he excludes the "facts" that led Miss Arendt to formulate a different theory...
...Reviewed by ROBERT MEISTER Editor: Journal of Existentialism From the perspective of over two years, in an atmosphere undisturbed by explosively emotional reviews, commentaries and symposia, a close re-reading of Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem yields opinions more sober and rational than the most resolutely dispassionate reader could have formed at the time of its publication...
...Criticisms of a more speculative nature, such as challenges of Miss Arendt's dim views on Jewish resistance and her interpretations of Eichmann's importance and character, are in many cases more unsound than their target...
...Unfortunately, the first thing that comes to mind after examining his efforts is that the preposterously magisterial title remains a promise to be fulfilled by someone else...
...Since he is inclined toward the theory of Eichmann as "a man of extraordinary driving power, master in the arts of cunning and deception...
...More Hungarians refer 01800 expected arrive tomorrow Members Party already arrived known leading bankers financiers Budapest their money power must facilitated evacuation while hundred thousands other jews being delt different manner including forcelabour...
...Jews, he says, "A careful review of the source material referred to reveals it to be almost entirely of German origin...
...But on the assumption it did one would expect a sound rendition of the facts available...
...No one, incidentally, seems to have noted that in formulating the much discussed "banality of evil" thesis she was in fact writing about the evil of banality...
...In her previous works Miss Arendt demonstrated two major tendencies: oracular self-assurance and excessive reliance on secondary sources...
...Robinson is equally guilty...
...To cite one instance (and others abound), speaking of Hilberg's The Destruction of European...
...Let it be said also that the Biblical title was clearly not chosen for allegorical use, for Robinson has attempted nothing less than the definitive hermeneutics of Eichmann in Jerusalem, submitting it to exegeses so minute as to be unequaled outside the field of Biblical studies...
...Alas or Hurrah, she did so condescend, and having entered secular realms she became fair game for a year's hunt...
...Robinson has not made the crooked straight, nor has he given any thought to the greatly important and still unattempted tasks facing scholars of the Jewish catastrophe...
...Robinson is only slightly more sound than Miss Arendt and he is not above carelessness or quoting out of context...
...Robinson is primarily a legal archivist and his approach is exclusively legalistic...
...He is like a man exhaustively analyzing a fire he has not seen by studying cinder...
...he is unable to lift his head from documents and equates legal testimony with truth...
...A review of the staggeringly voluminous criticism reveals nothing memorable...
...The overall effect of the controversy is not clarification but exasperated confusion...
...No, Dr...
...Had she not embarked on the Eichmann venture, her aura of relentless profundity might have remained ever unpolluted...
...Jacob Robinson's decision to clear the air was in all probability motivated by similar feelings and, judging by the subtitle, he meant to do it thoroughly and permanently...
...A significant beginning could be made if these scholars concerned themselves less with the extent of Eichmann's importance in the Nazi hierarchy and turned to such basic issues as the failure of Jewish assimilation in Eastern Europe...
...Yet, even here Robinson fails on two counts...
...In the first place, his legalistic disposition cannot allow him to recognize that material in existing documents can only be partially factual because it requires the researcher to take a choice, a choice inevitably at least tinged by subjective motives, between, say, the testimony of A and B. Thus in his hundreds of attempts to refute an Arendt statement by reference to a personal account, Robinson does nothing more than prefer testimony A to testimony B. It is not only a false historical method, it is the method of prosecutors...
...If Miss Arendt was guilty of selecting her facts to suit her theories, Dr...
...Simply put-and the book as well as the violent controversies that followed appear quite simple now-Eichmann in Jerusalem is a journalistic tour de force in the tradition of Rebecca West's trial reportage, embodying the virtues and shortcomings of the genre in a striking manner...
...A great deal of time would have been saved if Robinson had read the very first paragraph of Hilberg's Preface, which makes it clear that the book is about the Germans, not the Jews...
...As for the facts themselves, Dr...
...Nevertheless, her choice of panoramic subjects (The Human Condition, Between Past and Future, The Origins of Totalitarianism, On Revolution) and her overwhelming expositions evoked virtually unanimous respect, even awe, for her erudition and authoritativeness...
...Every casuist in the land perceived in the Eichmann case an arena safe to enter without qualifications of legal and historical knowledge, for it appeared to be, above all, a moral issue and thus in the public domain...
...And here lies Robinson's second failure in his treatment of "facts...
...He must not have expected the reader to go to that much trouble, for should the reader consult the indicated texts he will find the Arendt account completely confirmed...
...When Miss Arendt describes how the wealthy Weiss family was allowed to emigrate to Portugal at a time when the rest of Hungarian Jewry were being shipped to Auschwitz-an episode where the number of people involved in the transaction is the least important point -Robinson sends the reader to a series of 60 documents in trying to refute one clause in the Arendt text: forty-five members of the Weiss family emigrated to Portugal...
...Such an inquiry would offer a great many clues to a profound understanding of the Jewish catastrophe and the issue of resistance, much bandied about but still unanalyzed...
...When, for example, Arendt describes how the Danes successfully protected Jews from deportation, and incidentally mentions that the Germans found only 477 Jews on the fatal night, Robinson will refer to three different documents in adding up the numbers, come up with a "correct" total of 484 and qualify it with "about...
Vol. 49 • January 1966 • No. 1
