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May 25, 2012
Mark Clayton: Is Hillary's State Dept. hacking Al Qaeda? Not quite
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The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman: The former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with contemporary Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Sweet Noodle Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread
May 24, 2012
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The Kosher Gourmet by Penelope Wall: PHILLY CHEESE STEAKS --- hold the steak!
May 23, 2012
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May 22, 2012
Warren Richey: Can US group challenge overseas surveillance act? Supreme Court to decide
Thomas M. Anderson: Walking Away From a Mortgage
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon: Enjoy a celebration of the most rich and layered flavors: Black bean, sweet potato and quinoa chili
May 21, 2012
Mark Clayton: Cybersecurity: How US utilities passed up chance to protect their networks
Howard LaFranchi: NATO summit: Who will foot the bill for long-term Afghanistan security?
Chris Farrell : Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Stephen Whiteside, Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Social anxiety disorder --- or just shy?
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The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: Famed chef's veal shoulder farsumagru: A festive meat course for late spring
May 18, 2012
Rabbi Berel Wein: Striving: The People of the Book's Book for (All of) the People
Steven Goldberg: 5 Great Stock Picks and the Exchange-Traded Fund that Owns Them
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The Kosher Gourmet by Carolyn Malcoun: DIY healthy lunchbox treats: HOMEMADE FRUIT BARS for kids and brown-bagging adults alike
May 17, 2012
Warren Richey: Teacher fired for being unwed and pregnant can sue religious school, court rules
Josh Mitnick: Netanyahu's 'centrist' coalition is already proving it's anything but
Steven Goldberg: Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Amina Khan: Research links coffee to lower death rates
The Kosher Gourmet by Faith Duran : Cheesy Potato Breakfast Casserole with Cheddar and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
May 16, 2012
Carmen Terzic, M.D., Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: A variety of exercises can help improve balance
Melissa Healy: National strategy on Alzheimer's disease aims to halt it by 2025
The Kosher Gourmet by Joyce White : GOODNESS GRACIOUS: GREENS! 4 winning recipes that are no longer just for down-home folks (Includes expert tips & techniques)
May 15, 2012
Kristen Chick: Obama administration resumes arms sales to Bahrain despite serious unresolved human rights issues. Activists feel abandoned
Pat Mertz Esswein: Homes are now affordable again and mortgage rates are low. What you need to know before you buy
Kathy Kristof: Our Practical Investor Fights Inflation with These 6 Investments
Sue Hubbard, M.D.: The Kid's Doctor: Lactose intolerant young child? Check again
The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Hunt: Spread a Little Excitement with EXOTIC CONDIMENTS (4 RECIPES)
May 14, 2012
Lisa Gerstner: How to Protect Your Identity, Finances If You Lose Your Phone
Harvard Health Letters: Heart disease and dementia
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon: MANGO COCONUT OAT MORNING MUFFINS are a bright but hearty delight
May 11, 2012
Jessica L. Anderson: Get the Best Deal on a Used Car
Jett Stone: Forget face-lifts and fake knees. Scientists have seen the fountain of youth --- and it's broccoli
The Kosher Gourmet by Chef Mario Batali: The famed chef's vegetable dish that tastes true to the season: FAVAS AND SUGAR SNAP PEAS WITH POTATOES AND TARRAGON
May 10, 2012
Sergei L. Loiko: Putin sends warning to U.S., NATO in Victory Day speech at Red Square
Mary Rourke: How being a 'mentch' got Vidal Sasoon his start and fighting in Israel's War of Independence provided him with confidence and a strong sense of his own identity
Jeff Bertolucci: Get Home Phone Service for Less Than $10 a Month
The Kosher Gourmet by Betty Rosbottom: Gleaming with its golden, crimson, and snowy white hues, this silken smooth and creamy STRAWBERRY ORANGE TRIFLE looks impressive, but is easy to prepare
May 9, 2012
Sharon Palmer, R.D. How you can reduce your risk -- or delay -- chronic diseases associated with aging
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Jewish World Review
April 29, 2011
25 Nissan, 5771
Eichmann's Evil No Longer Banal
By
Suzanne Fields
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
BERLIN — Angela Merkel is losing her edge. Her party reacts to setbacks in local elections and is sidetracked by France's assertion of leadership toward the Arab Spring. But culturally and intellectually, Berlin is still the European capital pushing the envelope. Berlin drives the engine for thinking and rethinking Germany's past.
A new exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which ran in Jerusalem for nine months beginning in April 1961, continues this critical rethinking. "Facing Justice — Adolf Eichmann on Trial," at the Topography of Terror, which documents the Nazi apparatus in the Third Reich, brings it back for updated reflection, with photographs and videos of witnesses, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges.
While the victims get a strong voice in telling of their suffering, Eichmann remains the central figure, who in his own words captures our attention for his matter-of-fact distortion of truth and his self-satisfied lack of remorse. If ever there was a man who gave definition to George Orwell's word "doublethink," it was Eichmann, director of "Section IV D4" for "Jewish affairs" in the Reich Security Main Office.
Hannah Arendt occupies a small part of this exhibit, presented in a photograph and in excerpts from the pages of the New Yorker magazine, for whom she reported the trial. But the exhibition is an accumulative refutation of her thesis that Eichmann reflected the "banality of evil" — the ordinariness of a bureaucratic criminal merely following orders, and not the anti-Semitic zealot he was, carrying out the Nazi program of extermination of the Jews with pride, pleasure and perniciousness.
He explained his actions for getting rid of Jews with dull understatement, but he was considerably more than a small cog in the vast Nazi machine, who claimed to fear for his life if he refused to execute policy.
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In fact, as this exhibit makes clear, no one who objected to following orders in the extermination of the Jews was severely punished. Arendt regretted using the phrase "banality of evil" in relation to Eichmann — which was the subtitle for her book about the trial — because there was nothing ordinary or boring about him. He fascinates as he hides in plain sight, manipulating through rhetorical tricks a revisionist history of his past. One scholar puts it succinctly in the catalogue that "Arendt had been hoodwinked to a degree by Eichmann's staging of himself at the trial as an obedient 'receiver of orders.'"
The exhibition relies more accurately on research that emerged in the last decade of the 20th century that shows Eichmann as a man who plotted to "improve" the effectiveness of the murder of Jews, who was constantly in action, not as a puppet but as an active anti-Semitic warrior against "the Jewish enemy."
The Berlin exhibit coincides with the publication of Deborah Liptstadt's new book, "The Eichmann Trial," which also faults Arendt's failure to bring attention to his key role in organizing the Holocaust, partly because she left the trial early and wrote less as a personal witness to his testimony than from dry transcripts that lack his sinister inflection. Her social and political prejudices also infected her analysis.
"I wasn't only issued orders, in this case I'd have been a moron, but I rather anticipated (them), I was an idealist," he testified, smug from behind the protection of his bulletproof glass booth. His "idealism" was employed in perfecting the efficiency of genocide. As early as 1938, he had roughed up a leader of the Jewish community in Vienna, a man 20 years his senior, "to get the Jewish trotting along." He beat to death a Jewish boy for stealing fruit from his tree in Budapest.
The Holocaust offered him greater "rewards" for malevolence. As he became increasingly obsessed with destroying Jews, he described himself as rational rather than emotional, even calling himself a Zionist who preferred finding another land for the homeless Jews rather than sending them to the death camps.
Evil need not be theatrical to expose itself. Eichmann was no Dr. Faustus, ambitiously making a pact with the devil. He was a puny man when he wasn't inflated by the grandeur of power. Like most villains when caught, he was reduced to defending himself with tawdry half-truths, admitting complicity in evil deeds but denying responsibility. A large map shows his presence in Prague, Vienna, Budapest and various concentration camps between 1937 to 1945, confirming his whereabouts before, during and after the crimes against the Jews.
"You'd never know when I'd turn up," he told an Argentine interviewer, a former SS agent, after World War II.
So he's turned up again in Berlin, of all places, where a new generation gets to draw its own conclusions. They, too, will find nothing banal about it.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.
Suzanne Fields Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate, Suzanne Fields
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