Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem

50x25 cm 2022 Collage on aluminum

“And just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations – as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world – we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

 50c70 cm 2022 Collage and oil on paper

50x70 cm 2022 Collage and oil on paper

“The Führer has ordered the physical extermination of the Jews.” After which, “very much against his habits, he remained silent for a long while, as though he wanted to test the impact of his words. I remember it even today. In the first moment, I was unable to grasp the significance of what he had said, because he was so careful in choosing his words, and then I understood, and didn’t say anything, because there was nothing to say any more. For I had never thought of such a thing, such a solution through violence.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

50x70 cm 2022 Collage and oil on paper

“Hence the problem was how to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler--who apparently was rather strongly afflicted with these instinctive reactions himself--was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil