1
00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:12,074



2
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[narration: man]
Heidelberg. October 28, 1945.

3
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Dear Hannah Arendt,
Often over the past years,

4
00:02:40,731 --> 00:02:44,544
we worried about your fate
and, for a long time now,

5
00:02:44,585 --> 00:02:47,065
we did not have much hope
that you were still alive.

6
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It seems to me that you have
completely maintained your inner core,

7
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whether you have been
in Königsberg, Heidelberg,

8
00:02:54,476 --> 00:02:55,803
Paris or America.

9
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Anyone who is a real human being
has to be able to do that.

10
00:03:01,749 --> 00:03:05,757
Here, we now have to see
what we can rebuild out of the chaos.

11
00:03:06,585 --> 00:03:08,743
Yours, Karl Jaspers.

12
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[chorus: song of mourning]

13
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[narration: woman]
New York, 1945.

14
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Dear, dear Karl Jaspers,
my teacher.

15
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Ever since I've known
that you both came through

16
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the whole hellish mess
unharmed,

17
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I've felt somewhat more
at home in the world again.

18
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I don't need to tell you
that I worried about you all those years.

19
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My happiness in feeling
a bond with you

20
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is mixed up with a child like
desire not to disappoint you.

21
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You are quite simply
the greatest educator of all time.

22
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Don't laugh. It's true.

23
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And only because
you are a philosopher.

24
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I've been turning
your manuscript "Guilt Question"

25
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over and over again
in my mind.

26
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Your definition of Nazi policy
as a crime

27
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strikes me as questionable.

28
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The Nazi crimes,
it seems to me,

29
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explode the limits
of the law,

30
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and that is precisely
what constitutes their monstrousness.

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We're simply not equipped to deal
on a human and political level

32
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with a guilt
that is beyond crime

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and an innocence that is
beyond goodness or virtue.

34
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[narration: Jaspers]
Dear Hannah Arendt,

35
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I'm not altogether comfortable
with your view,

36
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because a guilt that goes
beyond all criminal guilt

37
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inevitably takes on
a streak of greatness,

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of satanic greatness.

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This, for me, is as
inappropriate for the Nazis

40
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as all the talks about
the demonic element in Hitler.

41
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It seems to me that we have to
see these things in their total banality,

42
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in their prosaic triviality,

43
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because that's what truly
characterizes them.

44
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Bacteria can cause epidemics
that wipe out nations,

45
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but it remains merely bacteria.

46
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[narration: Arendt]
My beloved, adored teacher,

47
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I realize completely that in the way
I have expressed this up to now,

48
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I come dangerously close
to that satanic greatness

49
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that I, like you,
totally reject.

50
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Perhaps what is behind it all is
not only that individual human beings

51
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kill other
individual human beings,

52
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but that an organized attempt
was made to eradicate

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the concept of the human being.

54
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[rifles cocking]

55
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[gunshots]

56
00:06:23,227 --> 00:06:29,256
I think that the
most profound experience in Arendt's life

57
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was reading the horrors of what happened
in the Holocaust.

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And I think that it is that reflection of
the horrors of the Holocaust

59
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that is a key
to a deeper understanding

60
00:06:42,302 --> 00:06:44,293
of everything
she wrote after that.

61
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You know, including
 On Revolution,

62
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The Human Condition,

63
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Between Past and Future,
The Life of the Mind.

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When people talk, "Oh, she--
Her love of the world," and so forth,

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it's a very real thing.

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But for the difference
in the world,

67
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the difference
is the plurality.

68
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That's another very basic
concept of Arendt's--

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is the plurality,
the difference, the diversity.

70
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She thought, actually,

71
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that every single individual
was unique,

72
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every person in the world
was unique.

73
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But more-- more--
[chuckles]

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I don't know if she was right.
I think she was unique.

75
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I'm not so sure
about everybody.

76
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[in Hebrew]

77
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[horns honking]

78
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[chattering]

79
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[film score plays: dramatic]

80
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[film narrator, in Hebrew]

81
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[narration: Arendt] March 1961.

82
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My beloved, adored teacher.

83
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The Eichmann trial, against which you
voiced your reservations at the outset,

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has now happily, or unhappily,
thrown our plans out the window.

85
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But, my dear and honored friend,
I would never forgive myself

86
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if I didn't go and see with my own eyes
this real-life disaster

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unfolding with all
its uncanny vacuousness.

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Don't forget how early
I left Germany

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and how little of this
I really experienced directly.

90
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Many years ago, I described
the totalitarian system.

91
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It was always the system, rather than
the individuals, that I was referring to.

92
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And if you look
at the system as a whole,

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every individual person,
indeed, becomes a cog--

94
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small or big--
in the machine of terror.

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Now I wanted to know
who Eichmann is

96
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insofar as he was a free agent
who had the freedom of choice.

97
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And for this reason, the whole
"small cog" theory is irrelevant.

98
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This probably was my most powerful motive
to go to Jerusalem.

99
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[Asheim, in Hebrew]

100
00:11:02,347 --> 00:11:06,532
[spectators chattering]

101
00:11:06,578 --> 00:11:08,119
[bailiff, in Hebrew]

102
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[narration: Arendt]
Clearly, this courtroom

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is not a bad place
for the show trial

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00:11:13,733 --> 00:11:17,358
that David Ben-Gurion,
prime minister of Israel, had in mind.

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Not once
has he attended a session.

106
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In the courtroom, he speaks with the voice
of Gideon Hausner,

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the attorney general.

108
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[Hausner, in Hebrew]

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[narration: Arendt] It was bad history
and cheap rhetoric.

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It was not an individual on the stand
at that historic trial,

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and not even
the Nazi regime itself,

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but anti-Semitism
throughout history.

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Even worse, it suggested that perhaps
Eichmann was only an innocent executor

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of some mysteriously
predetermined destiny,

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or, for that matter,
even anti-Semitism itself.

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[in Hebrew]

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[crows squawking]

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[narration: Arendt]
In the eyes of the Jews,

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the catastrophe that had
befallen them under Hitler--

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in which a third of their people
perished--

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appeared not as the most
unprecedented crime of genocide,

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but as the oldest crime
they knew and remembered.

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None of the participants
at the trial

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ever arrived
at a clear understanding

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of the actual horrors
of Auschwitz,

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because it appeared to the prosecution
and judges alike

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as not much more than the most horrible
pogrom in Jewish history.

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What they missed is that the supreme
crime that they were confronted with

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was a crime against humanity,

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perpetrated upon the body
of the Jewish people,

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and that only the choice of
victims, not the nature of the crime,

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could be derived from the long
history of anti-Semitism.

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Genocide is an attack upon
human diversity as such,

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without which the very words
"mankind" or "humanity"

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would be devoid of meaning.

136
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[interviewer, in German]

137
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[in German]

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[murmuring]

139
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[on tape,
 in German]

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[narration: Arendt]
Evil is a surface phenomenon.

141
00:16:31,405 --> 00:16:34,779
We resist evil by not being
swept away without thinking

142
00:16:34,804 --> 00:16:37,812
by the surface appearance
of conventional things.

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We do it by reaching
another dimension

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00:16:41,313 --> 00:16:44,011
which lies beyond the horizon
of everyday life.

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In other words, the more
superficial someone is,

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the more likely he will be
to yield to evil.

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That is the Banality of Evil.

148
00:16:53,951 --> 00:16:57,740
An indication of such superficiality
was the use of clichés.

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00:16:58,201 --> 00:17:01,157
And Eichmann, God knows,
was a perfect example.

150
00:17:02,035 --> 00:17:04,160
[Eichmann on tape]

151
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[in Hebrew]

152
00:18:31,623 --> 00:18:32,971
People went berserk.

153
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The language
that was used to attack her,

154
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what people said
when they got up--

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survivors, uh,
children of survivors,

156
00:18:44,477 --> 00:18:46,314
uh, relatives.

157
00:18:46,358 --> 00:18:49,150
You're accusing someone
of being a traitor...

158
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a moral equivalent
of the murderers...

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00:18:54,617 --> 00:19:00,285
besmirching the innocence
of the death of all the victims.

160
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I mean, completely outrageous.

161
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The American Jewish community
made up their mind

162
00:19:06,826 --> 00:19:09,563
that she's exonerating
Eichmann,

163
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she's a self-hating Jew--
Jew.

164
00:19:13,785 --> 00:19:15,938
She is an anti-Zionist.

165
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And used every tactic
to type and discredit her.

166
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It went on--

167
00:19:20,944 --> 00:19:23,110
I would find myself...

168
00:19:24,694 --> 00:19:26,201
As late as ten years ago,

169
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I'd give a lecture
on Eichmann in Jerusalem,

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00:19:28,575 --> 00:19:29,854
and somebody in
the audience would

171
00:19:29,879 --> 00:19:31,607
get up and start
screaming at me.

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How could I defend
this vicious anti-Semite?

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[narration: woman] October 1906.

174
00:19:58,453 --> 00:20:02,049
Hannah Arendt was born
on October 14, 1906,

175
00:20:02,076 --> 00:20:04,246
at 9:15 p.m. on a Sunday.

176
00:20:04,933 --> 00:20:08,527
Labor lasted 22 hours,
and delivery was routine.

177
00:20:09,944 --> 00:20:13,536
The child weighed 3.695 kilos.

178
00:20:15,480 --> 00:20:18,140
Her eyes are gray-blue,
her ears are big,

179
00:20:18,387 --> 00:20:21,794
her nose is rather wide
and her mouth very small.

180
00:20:22,202 --> 00:20:24,286
Her skin color is not smooth.

181
00:20:29,034 --> 00:20:32,327
The little one is outdoors
whenever the weather permits.

182
00:20:32,407 --> 00:20:35,359
On warm days,
up to three and a half hours.

183
00:20:35,959 --> 00:20:39,185
She's vivacious and cheery,
a true chatterbox.

184
00:20:39,532 --> 00:20:42,110
She says the words
"Father," "Auntie"

185
00:20:42,135 --> 00:20:44,659
and "thank you" when someone
gives her something.

186
00:20:46,325 --> 00:20:48,378
When someone asks,
"What's your name?"

187
00:20:48,445 --> 00:20:50,528
she says "Haya Arendt."

188
00:20:53,280 --> 00:20:54,993
She turned four in October.

189
00:20:55,034 --> 00:20:58,304
She's an opinionated girl
who looks older than she is.

190
00:20:59,385 --> 00:21:02,598
She sings often with a passion,
but she's off-key.

191
00:21:04,239 --> 00:21:06,628
I don't think she has
any artistic skills.

192
00:21:06,674 --> 00:21:10,458
She has an intellectual side
to her, perhaps a skill in itself.

193
00:21:10,956 --> 00:21:14,350
But more than anything,
she loves letters and books.

194
00:21:16,737 --> 00:21:18,904
[laughing]

195
00:21:22,390 --> 00:21:24,264
Her father died in October.

196
00:21:24,306 --> 00:21:26,889
She perceives this
as a sad event for me.

197
00:21:26,931 --> 00:21:29,181
She herself is not affected.

198
00:21:30,431 --> 00:21:32,133
In order to console me,
she says,

199
00:21:32,180 --> 00:21:34,277
"Mother, it happens
to so many women."

200
00:21:35,773 --> 00:21:39,385
She cries at the funeral
because the singing is so beautiful.

201
00:21:46,078 --> 00:21:48,014
She's extremely sensitive.

202
00:21:48,151 --> 00:21:50,473
I see my youth in her,
and it saddens me

203
00:21:50,515 --> 00:21:53,512
that she, too, will be
tormented by men as I was.

204
00:21:54,644 --> 00:21:57,062
But one's destiny
cannot be spared.

205
00:21:59,548 --> 00:22:01,756
[in German]

206
00:23:56,546 --> 00:23:58,213
[horse whinnies]

207
00:24:07,065 --> 00:24:08,511
[narration: Arendt]
The quiet sorrow which

208
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:10,418
settles down after a catastrophe

209
00:24:10,460 --> 00:24:12,037
has never come to pass.

210
00:24:15,096 --> 00:24:19,284
The explosion of the First World
War touched off a chain reaction

211
00:24:19,358 --> 00:24:21,431
in which we have been caught
ever since

212
00:24:21,713 --> 00:24:24,134
and which nobody seems
to be able to stop.

213
00:24:31,538 --> 00:24:36,473
Its civil wars were not only bloodier
and crueler than all their predecessors,

214
00:24:36,515 --> 00:24:40,390
they were followed by migrations of groups
who were welcomed nowhere

215
00:24:40,431 --> 00:24:42,599
and could be assimilated
nowhere.

216
00:24:45,702 --> 00:24:48,751
Once they had left their
homeland, they remained homeless.

217
00:24:49,844 --> 00:24:52,714
Once they had left their state,
they became stateless.

218
00:24:53,912 --> 00:24:57,155
And once they had been deprived
of their human rights,

219
00:24:57,555 --> 00:24:58,919
they were rightless.

220
00:24:59,999 --> 00:25:02,191
They became
the scum of the earth,

221
00:25:02,564 --> 00:25:03,885
superfluous.

222
00:25:12,697 --> 00:25:16,988
So the insane mass manufacture
of corpses in Nazi time

223
00:25:17,030 --> 00:25:19,558
was preceded by
the historical preparation

224
00:25:19,583 --> 00:25:21,750
of living corpses of refugees.

225
00:25:28,903 --> 00:25:31,361
[woman, in Hebrew]

226
00:26:17,671 --> 00:26:19,213
For me, at least,
that's the most

227
00:26:19,237 --> 00:26:21,214
important thing she
has to say about it,

228
00:26:21,255 --> 00:26:23,758
that these people
have no rights.

229
00:26:23,789 --> 00:26:26,039
And in that sense,
they are superfluous.

230
00:26:26,064 --> 00:26:28,646
They are superfluous
to the political world.

231
00:26:28,713 --> 00:26:30,214
They are rightless people.

232
00:26:30,261 --> 00:26:32,622
They have no right
whatsoever.

233
00:26:32,682 --> 00:26:35,005
She said, "A criminal
who commits a crime

234
00:26:35,047 --> 00:26:36,994
who is a citizen
of a state,

235
00:26:37,019 --> 00:26:39,418
he may be imprisoned,
but he has rights.

236
00:26:40,463 --> 00:26:41,802
This refugee,

237
00:26:41,850 --> 00:26:45,494
this stateless person has
no rights at all, none."

238
00:26:45,729 --> 00:26:47,604
[truck engine rumbling]

239
00:26:53,274 --> 00:26:55,775
[narration: Arendt]
Denationalization and xenophobia

240
00:26:55,830 --> 00:26:59,349
became a powerful weapon
of totalitarian politics.

241
00:27:02,005 --> 00:27:06,079
Those who were defined by their
persecutors as scum of the earth--

242
00:27:06,130 --> 00:27:08,465
Jews, Trotskyists
and the like--

243
00:27:08,586 --> 00:27:10,996
were treated as such
wherever they went.

244
00:27:12,183 --> 00:27:16,838
Those unwanted by oppressive
governments became the unwanted of Europe.

245
00:27:18,548 --> 00:27:22,567
In time, the official SS newspaper
explicitly stated

246
00:27:22,592 --> 00:27:26,841
that if the world is not yet convinced
that the Jews are the scum of the earth,

247
00:27:27,058 --> 00:27:29,235
it will soon be convinced

248
00:27:29,329 --> 00:27:31,788
when these beggars
without citizenship,

249
00:27:31,996 --> 00:27:35,763
without money and passports,
cross over their borders.

250
00:28:04,968 --> 00:28:06,546
Before they seize power

251
00:28:06,588 --> 00:28:09,262
and establish their world
according to their doctrine,

252
00:28:09,336 --> 00:28:14,432
totalitarian movements conjure up a
false ideological and consistent world

253
00:28:14,499 --> 00:28:17,363
which is more in tune with
the needs of the human mind

254
00:28:17,429 --> 00:28:19,211
than reality itself.

255
00:28:34,959 --> 00:28:37,126
What the masses
refuse to recognize

256
00:28:37,180 --> 00:28:39,449
is the random nature
of reality.

257
00:28:40,379 --> 00:28:42,880
They are predisposed
to all ideologies

258
00:28:42,922 --> 00:28:45,893
because they explain facts
as mere laws

259
00:28:45,918 --> 00:28:49,088
and eliminate coincidences
and spontaneity

260
00:28:49,130 --> 00:28:51,934
by inventing
an all-embracing omnipotence

261
00:28:52,308 --> 00:28:55,256
which is supposed to be
at the root of every accident.

262
00:28:58,805 --> 00:29:02,088
Totalitarian propaganda
and ideology thrives

263
00:29:02,130 --> 00:29:05,005
on this escape from reality
into fiction,

264
00:29:05,144 --> 00:29:07,686
from coincidence
into consistency.

265
00:29:08,139 --> 00:29:09,843
Logic is its core.

266
00:29:10,588 --> 00:29:15,152
The ideology creates
the evil itself.

267
00:29:15,384 --> 00:29:18,246
Like Stalinism or Hitlerism,

268
00:29:18,296 --> 00:29:21,265
or you have the Pol Pot
in Cambodia.

269
00:29:22,703 --> 00:29:27,601
In each cases, you have
this ideology which somehow--

270
00:29:27,674 --> 00:29:32,005
It brings people
to this superfluousness

271
00:29:32,047 --> 00:29:35,796
which wants to monopolize truth,

272
00:29:35,838 --> 00:29:40,546
which somehow wants to destroy
the mode of thinking--

273
00:29:40,588 --> 00:29:43,379
and the process
of thinking and judging--

274
00:29:43,514 --> 00:29:47,617
and somehow also wants
to put an end

275
00:29:47,696 --> 00:29:50,706
to the human capacity
of speech and action.

276
00:29:50,925 --> 00:29:53,009
[no audible dialogue]

277
00:30:30,255 --> 00:30:32,588
[interviewer, in French]

278
00:30:41,122 --> 00:30:43,997
[in English]

279
00:30:48,229 --> 00:30:50,645
[woman translating
 into French]

280
00:32:28,681 --> 00:32:33,630
[man] It was in 1924,
University of Marburg.

281
00:32:33,948 --> 00:32:36,603
There I met,
among the new students,

282
00:32:36,650 --> 00:32:41,868
this very striking young girl--
Hannah Arendt.

283
00:32:41,928 --> 00:32:46,838
At that time,
there was the great--

284
00:32:46,911 --> 00:32:49,433
The great attraction
for philosophers,

285
00:32:49,499 --> 00:32:51,191
for philosophy students,

286
00:32:51,216 --> 00:32:56,415
was the presence of a man
by the name of Martin Heidegger,

287
00:32:56,455 --> 00:32:59,607
who wasn't famous yet
at the time.

288
00:32:59,687 --> 00:33:02,149
But by word-of-mouth,

289
00:33:02,862 --> 00:33:06,210
it was known
that he was a rising star

290
00:33:06,256 --> 00:33:11,421
or a coming power
in contemporary philosophy.

291
00:33:11,461 --> 00:33:14,998
Anyway, he must have
recognized very soon

292
00:33:15,038 --> 00:33:17,535
that she was
something special,

293
00:33:18,242 --> 00:33:22,963
and very quickly they developed
a personal relationship,

294
00:33:23,005 --> 00:33:27,994
which in a strange way, lasted
through Hannah Arendt's life.

295
00:33:41,488 --> 00:33:43,514
[narration: Heidegger]
February 1925.

296
00:33:44,301 --> 00:33:45,664
Dear Miss Arendt,

297
00:33:46,654 --> 00:33:49,947
Everything should be simple
and clear and pure between us.

298
00:33:50,703 --> 00:33:53,302
Only then will we be worthy
of having been allowed to meet.

299
00:33:55,029 --> 00:33:57,246
You are my pupil
and I your teacher,

300
00:33:57,572 --> 00:34:00,333
but that is only the circumstances
of what's happened to us.

301
00:34:00,737 --> 00:34:02,696
I will never be able
to call you mine,

302
00:34:02,850 --> 00:34:05,508
but, from now on,
you will belong in my life.

303
00:34:06,818 --> 00:34:08,558
You have lost your disquiet,

304
00:34:08,945 --> 00:34:11,062
which means you have found
your way to the innermost,

305
00:34:11,094 --> 00:34:12,899
purest feminine essence.

306
00:34:14,829 --> 00:34:17,209
Some day you will be
grateful, not to me,

307
00:34:17,654 --> 00:34:19,236
that this visit
to my office hour

308
00:34:19,261 --> 00:34:22,238
was your decisive retreat
from the path of academic research,

309
00:34:22,446 --> 00:34:24,124
which only men can endure.

310
00:34:26,238 --> 00:34:28,863
We must not think of ourselves
as soul mates,

311
00:34:28,904 --> 00:34:31,088
something
no one ever experiences.

312
00:34:32,595 --> 00:34:35,384
I cannot and do not
want to separate your loyal

313
00:34:35,408 --> 00:34:38,196
eyes and beautiful
figure from your pure trust,

314
00:34:38,238 --> 00:34:41,021
the honor and goodness
of your girlish essence.

315
00:34:43,045 --> 00:34:44,920
Yours, Martin.

316
00:34:48,912 --> 00:34:50,145
My dear Hannah,

317
00:34:50,737 --> 00:34:54,166
Today I greeted you during my lecture
and was happy that you were there.

318
00:34:54,863 --> 00:34:56,717
The lecture is still
a strain for me,

319
00:34:56,824 --> 00:35:00,324
but I hope I'll pull through and not be
as overwhelmed by the flu as my wife was.

320
00:35:01,917 --> 00:35:04,071
My wife will need
a rather long time to recover.

321
00:35:04,113 --> 00:35:07,260
And for the time being, I can't imagine
how the household will be maintained.

322
00:35:09,521 --> 00:35:10,788
I'm writing this to you,

323
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:14,556
even though I know you do not expect
an excuse for my silence.

324
00:35:15,314 --> 00:35:18,379
Much love. Yours, Martin.

325
00:35:20,530 --> 00:35:21,911
My dear Hannah,

326
00:35:22,488 --> 00:35:24,602
Do you want to come to see me
this Sunday evening?

327
00:35:25,055 --> 00:35:26,968
I live in joy
for such moments.

328
00:35:27,375 --> 00:35:28,825
Come around nine o'clock.

329
00:35:29,530 --> 00:35:31,321
If the lamp is lit in my room,
though,

330
00:35:31,363 --> 00:35:33,113
I will have been delayed
by a meeting.

331
00:35:33,224 --> 00:35:34,521
My dear Hannah!

332
00:35:34,988 --> 00:35:38,551
I would be very glad if you came to see
me today at 8:45 in the evening.

333
00:35:38,963 --> 00:35:41,634
If the light is on in my room,
then I am home.

334
00:35:42,021 --> 00:35:44,205
It will be hard for us
to see each other this week.

335
00:35:44,645 --> 00:35:47,448
In any case,
definitely Tuesday the 26th.

336
00:35:47,817 --> 00:35:49,243
You'll still be here,
won't you?

337
00:35:49,725 --> 00:35:51,458
But only after nine o'clock.

338
00:35:52,304 --> 00:35:54,164
Yours, Martin.

339
00:35:55,696 --> 00:35:57,613
[in German]

340
00:36:57,534 --> 00:36:59,117
[narration: Arendt] 1925.

341
00:36:59,572 --> 00:37:03,363
Every time I woke up from the long,
dreamy, and yet deep sleep

342
00:37:03,417 --> 00:37:06,696
in which one merges entirely
with what one dreams,

343
00:37:06,987 --> 00:37:09,541
I felt the same shy, caring,

344
00:37:09,566 --> 00:37:13,138
probing tenderness towards
the things of the world.

345
00:37:13,798 --> 00:37:16,252
This made clear to me
how much of my actual

346
00:37:16,276 --> 00:37:18,888
life had sunken
completely into itself,

347
00:37:18,913 --> 00:37:20,237
like sleep.

348
00:37:21,707 --> 00:37:23,418
Indeed, when the simplicity and

349
00:37:23,464 --> 00:37:25,761
ordinariness of life
struck me to the core,

350
00:37:25,788 --> 00:37:27,446
it did not occur to me

351
00:37:27,488 --> 00:37:31,160
that all the suffering I
experienced would be so banal...

352
00:37:32,208 --> 00:37:33,762
a worthless nothing

353
00:37:34,643 --> 00:37:36,934
that the everybody
just took for granted.

354
00:37:44,406 --> 00:37:47,775
[narration: Heidegger]
April 1925, Todtnauberg.

355
00:37:48,628 --> 00:37:50,321
My dearest,

356
00:37:50,506 --> 00:37:53,009
Fragmentation and despair
will never overpower

357
00:37:53,034 --> 00:37:55,146
your supportive love
for my work.

358
00:38:01,691 --> 00:38:03,737
Your letter moved me for days.

359
00:38:04,051 --> 00:38:06,414
The parts:
"If you want to have me--

360
00:38:07,006 --> 00:38:08,067
If you like"--

361
00:38:08,904 --> 00:38:12,801
What can I do in the face
of such shy and yet so resolute waiting,

362
00:38:13,110 --> 00:38:14,653
such persistence?

363
00:38:17,086 --> 00:38:18,940
Good night, dearest Hannah.

364
00:38:19,523 --> 00:38:21,148
Your Martin.

365
00:38:28,167 --> 00:38:30,447
[narration: Arendt]
Königsberg, 1925.

366
00:38:31,267 --> 00:38:34,481
Perhaps my youth will
struggle free of the spell.

367
00:38:35,654 --> 00:38:37,654
Perhaps my soul will realize

368
00:38:37,679 --> 00:38:40,366
what it is to speak out
under a different sky...

369
00:38:41,921 --> 00:38:46,120
and thus overcome sickness
and confusion and learn simplicity

370
00:38:46,195 --> 00:38:48,315
and the freedom
of organic growth.

371
00:38:50,136 --> 00:38:53,071
But it's more likely that
I'll continue to pursue my life

372
00:38:53,098 --> 00:38:55,928
in idle experiments
and with curiosity

373
00:38:56,761 --> 00:39:00,669
until finally, the long
and eagerly awaited end takes me,

374
00:39:00,701 --> 00:39:04,134
putting an arbitrary stop
to my useless activity.

375
00:39:14,710 --> 00:39:16,376
[train whistle blows]

376
00:39:56,835 --> 00:39:58,745
[narration: Arendt] June 1929.

377
00:39:59,118 --> 00:40:00,785
Dear Professor Jaspers,

378
00:40:01,291 --> 00:40:02,564
Please forgive me
for sending you

379
00:40:02,589 --> 00:40:05,114
the second version
of my dissertation only now.

380
00:40:05,494 --> 00:40:07,454
I got married four weeks ago.

381
00:40:08,361 --> 00:40:10,559
My husband and I
are now in Heidelberg.

382
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:12,323
I would very much
like to see you

383
00:40:12,367 --> 00:40:14,487
if you would let me know
when it would be convenient.

384
00:40:14,889 --> 00:40:17,655
Your most devoted,
Hannah Arendt Stern.

385
00:40:19,499 --> 00:40:22,067
Oh, Jaspers was--

386
00:40:22,147 --> 00:40:25,113
I think she almost
admits that--

387
00:40:25,165 --> 00:40:26,898
Her father died
when she was very young,

388
00:40:26,952 --> 00:40:30,971
and Jaspers, in many senses,
took her father's place.

389
00:40:31,018 --> 00:40:33,592
And I think she was
well aware of that.

390
00:40:33,646 --> 00:40:35,647
And then later on,

391
00:40:35,721 --> 00:40:39,433
they became just friends,
just really great friends.

392
00:40:39,475 --> 00:40:41,113
She once said,
"Jaspers is the man

393
00:40:41,137 --> 00:40:42,346
I can say anything to.

394
00:40:42,399 --> 00:40:44,694
I don't have to be afraid
of offending him.

395
00:40:44,734 --> 00:40:46,667
He can say anything
he wants to me.

396
00:40:46,692 --> 00:40:48,615
We cannot offend
each other."

397
00:40:49,808 --> 00:40:51,076
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

398
00:40:51,116 --> 00:40:52,776
"We cannot offend
each other."

399
00:40:53,616 --> 00:40:55,820
They were closer than--

400
00:40:56,193 --> 00:40:57,975
Even though they disagreed.

401
00:40:58,016 --> 00:40:59,871
They might disagree
completely about--

402
00:40:59,905 --> 00:41:02,100
Well, they disagreed about
Heidegger, for one thing.

403
00:41:02,142 --> 00:41:03,881
Although she
said terrible things

404
00:41:03,918 --> 00:41:05,948
about Heidegger to Jaspers.

405
00:41:06,369 --> 00:41:07,995
Terrible, but--

406
00:41:09,559 --> 00:41:11,417
[interviewer] Why
you're so excited?

407
00:41:11,716 --> 00:41:12,890
Pardon me?

408
00:41:15,382 --> 00:41:17,857
Yeah, yeah, it moves me,
'cause that was--

409
00:41:17,891 --> 00:41:20,142
That was truly one
of the great...

410
00:41:20,359 --> 00:41:23,844
relationships,
I think, in the--

411
00:41:23,898 --> 00:41:26,406
In our time,
in the 20th century.

412
00:41:27,175 --> 00:41:30,467
[phonograph: children's choir
singing "O Tannenbaum"]

413
00:42:12,869 --> 00:42:15,884
[narration: Arendt]
Berlin, January 1, 1933.

414
00:42:16,716 --> 00:42:18,444
Dear Professor Jaspers,

415
00:42:18,844 --> 00:42:22,827
Thank you so much for your article
about the sociologist, Max Weber.

416
00:42:23,254 --> 00:42:27,168
It does not bother me that you portray
Max Weber as the great German,

417
00:42:27,234 --> 00:42:30,416
but rather that you find
the "German essence" in him

418
00:42:30,449 --> 00:42:34,517
and identify that essence
with "rationality and humanity

419
00:42:34,559 --> 00:42:36,578
which originated in passion."

420
00:42:45,329 --> 00:42:46,851
For me, as a Jew,

421
00:42:46,892 --> 00:42:50,876
Germany means my mother tongue,
philosophy and literature.

422
00:42:52,140 --> 00:42:53,901
I cannot be for or against it

423
00:42:53,926 --> 00:42:56,521
when I read Max Weber's
wonderful sentence

424
00:42:56,568 --> 00:42:59,197
where he says that to put
Germany back on her feet,

425
00:42:59,222 --> 00:43:02,227
he would form an alliance
with the devil himself.

426
00:43:03,948 --> 00:43:07,423
And it is this sentence that
reveals the critical point here.

427
00:43:08,149 --> 00:43:12,288
The text stressed that freedom
is not to be identified with Germanness.

428
00:43:12,321 --> 00:43:13,994
But, in the introduction,

429
00:43:14,068 --> 00:43:16,685
you make rationality
and humanity out to be

430
00:43:16,721 --> 00:43:19,588
something like basic qualities
of the German character.

431
00:43:21,772 --> 00:43:23,981
Yours, Hannah Arendt Stern.

432
00:43:25,659 --> 00:43:27,106
[narration: Jaspers]
Dear Frau Stern,

433
00:43:27,179 --> 00:43:29,458
I find it odd that you,
as a Jew,

434
00:43:29,492 --> 00:43:31,933
want to set yourself apart
from what is German.

435
00:43:32,182 --> 00:43:35,441
My reason for choosing
that somewhat odd formulation

436
00:43:35,513 --> 00:43:39,135
probably had to do with my own
pedagogical impulse.

437
00:43:40,810 --> 00:43:43,937
Our nationalistic youth
have so much goodwill

438
00:43:43,970 --> 00:43:47,458
tangled up in their confused
and wrongheaded jabbering

439
00:43:47,798 --> 00:43:51,074
that I wanted to make them aware
of the demands on themselves

440
00:43:51,099 --> 00:43:53,308
that are inherent
in being German,

441
00:43:53,627 --> 00:43:57,961
while at the same time acknowledging
their need to feel pride in being German.

442
00:43:57,986 --> 00:43:59,533
[cheering]

443
00:43:59,558 --> 00:44:01,716
The word "German"
is so much misused

444
00:44:01,751 --> 00:44:04,317
that one can hardly
use it at all anymore.

445
00:44:09,388 --> 00:44:12,226
I made the attempt,
hopeless perhaps,

446
00:44:12,272 --> 00:44:15,281
to give it ethical content
through the figure of Max Weber.

447
00:44:15,781 --> 00:44:18,521
That attempt, however,
would have proved successful

448
00:44:18,568 --> 00:44:22,389
only if you, too, could say,
"That's the way it is.

449
00:44:22,414 --> 00:44:24,466
I also want to be a German."

450
00:44:27,043 --> 00:44:28,668
Dear regards to your husband.

451
00:44:28,738 --> 00:44:30,838
Yours, Karl Jaspers.

452
00:44:35,085 --> 00:44:36,832
[narration: Arendt]
Dear Professor Jaspers,

453
00:44:37,492 --> 00:44:40,986
What troubled me first of all
is the term "German character".

454
00:44:41,286 --> 00:44:43,683
You say yourself
how misused it is.

455
00:44:44,541 --> 00:44:47,342
For me, it's almost
identical with misuse.

456
00:44:49,590 --> 00:44:53,226
I cannot identify with that
because I do not have in myself,

457
00:44:53,251 --> 00:44:56,086
so to speak,
any sign of German character.

458
00:44:59,187 --> 00:45:02,353
Germany, in its old glory
is your past.

459
00:45:03,371 --> 00:45:06,871
What my Germany is can hardly
be expressed in one phrase.

460
00:45:07,498 --> 00:45:10,917
Any oversimplification,
whether it is that of the Zionists,

461
00:45:10,942 --> 00:45:13,403
the assimilationists
or the anti-Semites,

462
00:45:13,428 --> 00:45:16,331
only serves to obscure
the true problem.

463
00:45:21,248 --> 00:45:23,988
As always, yours, Hannah Stern.

464
00:45:33,573 --> 00:45:35,531
[laughing]

465
00:46:20,083 --> 00:46:21,125
[laughs]

466
00:46:22,364 --> 00:46:24,380
[man] Heil Hitler!
[man 2] Heil Hitler!

467
00:46:24,433 --> 00:46:25,855
[young man] Heil!
[man 3] Sieg Heil!

468
00:46:25,895 --> 00:46:28,030
[man 4] Heil Hitler!
[man 5] Heil Hitler!

469
00:46:28,090 --> 00:46:30,495
[man 6] Heil Hitler!

470
00:46:30,561 --> 00:46:31,902
[woman] Heil Hitler!

471
00:46:31,955 --> 00:46:33,095
[young man] Heil Hitler!

472
00:46:33,981 --> 00:46:35,147
[man 7] Heil Hitler!

473
00:46:35,172 --> 00:46:36,823
[man 8] Heil Hitler!
[man 9] Heil!

474
00:46:36,876 --> 00:46:38,084
[man] Heil Hitler!

475
00:46:39,621 --> 00:46:41,371
[in German]

476
00:47:34,419 --> 00:47:36,616
[narration: Arendt] In
the summer of 1924,

477
00:47:36,674 --> 00:47:38,236
Franz Kafka died.

478
00:47:39,409 --> 00:47:43,072
Today, we know that Kafka's
detention was not a mere nightmare.

479
00:47:44,278 --> 00:47:47,076
In his search for the real reasons
for his ordeal,

480
00:47:47,309 --> 00:47:49,915
K. turns to the prison chaplain
for advice,

481
00:47:50,255 --> 00:47:52,898
and he preaches the hidden
greatness of the system

482
00:47:53,105 --> 00:47:55,608
and orders him
not to ask for the truth.

483
00:47:55,655 --> 00:47:59,016
"For it is not necessary
to accept everything as true.

484
00:47:59,350 --> 00:48:03,391
One must accept it as necessary,
a no-choice situation."

485
00:48:04,397 --> 00:48:06,687
"A melancholy conclusion,"
said K.

486
00:48:07,139 --> 00:48:09,802
"It turns lying
into a universal principle."

487
00:48:19,938 --> 00:48:22,611
True enough,
the force of the machinery

488
00:48:22,645 --> 00:48:26,230
lies precisely in this appearance
of necessity on the one hand

489
00:48:26,277 --> 00:48:29,289
and in the admiration of the people
for necessity on the other.

490
00:48:29,329 --> 00:48:30,997
[crowd cheering]

491
00:48:34,518 --> 00:48:36,601
Lying for the sake
of necessity

492
00:48:36,659 --> 00:48:39,304
appears as something
that is most sublime.

493
00:48:46,570 --> 00:48:49,685
It has been characteristic
of our history consciousness

494
00:48:49,710 --> 00:48:54,066
that its worst crimes have been committed
in the name of some kind of necessity

495
00:48:54,131 --> 00:48:56,723
or in the name
of a mythological future.

496
00:49:14,230 --> 00:49:16,064
[prosecutor] Concentration camps

497
00:49:16,105 --> 00:49:19,183
was one of the things you found
immediately necessary

498
00:49:19,216 --> 00:49:21,064
upon coming to power,
was it not?

499
00:49:21,185 --> 00:49:24,088
And you set them up as a matter
of necessity, as you saw it.

500
00:49:24,254 --> 00:49:27,955
[in German]

501
00:49:30,744 --> 00:49:35,601
[prosecutor]
Yes. And I assume that

502
00:49:35,674 --> 00:49:37,678
that is the only
kind of government

503
00:49:37,711 --> 00:49:40,230
that you think
can function in Germany

504
00:49:40,537 --> 00:49:42,155
under present conditions.

505
00:50:36,403 --> 00:50:40,513
[crowd shouting]
Heil! Heil! Heil!

506
00:50:40,538 --> 00:50:43,647
[man, in German]

507
00:51:09,069 --> 00:51:14,681
[crowd shouting]
 Heil! Heil! Heil!

508
00:51:18,599 --> 00:51:20,653
[narration: Arendt] The trouble
with totalitarian regimes

509
00:51:20,678 --> 00:51:24,397
is not that they play power politics
in an especially ruthless way,

510
00:51:24,717 --> 00:51:26,570
but that behind their politics

511
00:51:26,597 --> 00:51:30,301
is hidden an entirely new and
deceptive concept of reality--

512
00:51:31,307 --> 00:51:36,693
idealism, that is, unwavering
faith in an ideological fictitious world

513
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:38,953
rather than just
a lust for power.

514
00:51:39,573 --> 00:51:41,406
[crowd applauding]

515
00:51:41,453 --> 00:51:44,483
[in German]

516
00:52:04,056 --> 00:52:05,972
[crowd cheering]

517
00:52:23,678 --> 00:52:24,958
[narration: Heidegger]
Dear students,

518
00:52:25,527 --> 00:52:27,588
the concept of freedom
for German students

519
00:52:27,632 --> 00:52:30,151
is now being restored
to its true meaning,

520
00:52:30,477 --> 00:52:34,674
out of which the future loyalty
and service of German youth would evolve.

521
00:52:35,544 --> 00:52:38,258
Camaraderie marks the individual
with an imprint

522
00:52:38,291 --> 00:52:40,053
that carries him beyond himself.

523
00:52:41,037 --> 00:52:43,676
We know the resoluteness
of their expressions,

524
00:52:43,701 --> 00:52:47,701
the stern clarity of their gaze,
their decisive handshake,

525
00:52:47,726 --> 00:52:50,456
their uncompromising way
of speaking.

526
00:52:51,396 --> 00:52:53,944
This new race is,
at every moment, emerging.

527
00:52:54,876 --> 00:52:58,211
Now this student
will become a worker.

528
00:53:15,002 --> 00:53:17,335
[crowd cheering]

529
00:53:17,377 --> 00:53:22,160
[crowd shouting]
 Heil! Heil! Heil!

530
00:53:23,067 --> 00:53:24,153
[narration: Heidegger]
German students,

531
00:53:25,424 --> 00:53:29,016
may you ceaselessly grow in the courage
to sacrifice yourselves

532
00:53:29,080 --> 00:53:32,195
for the salvation of our nation's
essential being

533
00:53:32,705 --> 00:53:36,047
and the increase of
its innermost strength of its polity.

534
00:53:36,961 --> 00:53:41,669
The führer himself, and
he alone, is German reality--

535
00:53:41,711 --> 00:53:44,216
present and future--
and its law.

536
00:53:44,711 --> 00:53:45,918
Heil Hitler!

537
00:53:46,091 --> 00:53:50,934
[crowd shouting]
Heil! Heil! Heil!

538
00:53:51,944 --> 00:53:54,361
[in German]

539
00:55:52,341 --> 00:55:54,901
[in French]

540
00:56:15,835 --> 00:56:18,377
[marching band playing]

541
00:56:31,387 --> 00:56:32,920
[Faye continues in French]

542
00:56:32,945 --> 00:56:34,153
[narration: Heidegger]
The underlying requirement

543
00:56:34,191 --> 00:56:36,102
is then to find the enemy,

544
00:56:36,260 --> 00:56:38,874
to bring him to light
or even to create him

545
00:56:39,210 --> 00:56:42,085
in order that there may be
a standing up to the enemy

546
00:56:42,205 --> 00:56:45,586
and that our existence
would not become apathetic.

547
00:56:48,955 --> 00:56:52,476
It is often much harder
to seek out the enemy as such

548
00:56:52,501 --> 00:56:54,699
and to lead him
to reveal himself,

549
00:56:55,238 --> 00:56:57,335
to avoid nurturing
illusions about him,

550
00:56:57,487 --> 00:56:58,855
to remain ready to attack,

551
00:56:58,881 --> 00:57:01,190
and to cultivate
constant preparedness

552
00:57:01,216 --> 00:57:03,507
to attack on a long-term basis

553
00:57:03,580 --> 00:57:06,475
with the goal
of total extermination.

554
00:57:07,240 --> 00:57:09,365
[in French]

555
00:57:44,356 --> 00:57:46,627
She didn't think Heidegger
was an evil man,

556
00:57:46,669 --> 00:57:48,085
and it is not--

557
00:57:48,127 --> 00:57:51,377
Heidegger never killed anybody
or anything like that.

558
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:54,714
He never-- [stammering]

559
00:57:54,767 --> 00:57:57,136
He was absolutely
bamboozled.

560
00:57:57,182 --> 00:58:00,457
He was made a fool of.
He made a fool of himself.

561
00:58:00,483 --> 00:58:04,122
But this was a real--
a real thinker.

562
00:58:04,196 --> 00:58:07,932
But when-- She said,
when the chips are down,

563
00:58:08,012 --> 00:58:12,115
that's when thinking
becomes a phenomenon.

564
00:58:12,155 --> 00:58:14,981
It enters the phenomenal
world as judgment.

565
00:58:15,015 --> 00:58:16,858
"No, I will not do that."

566
00:58:16,912 --> 00:58:18,627
Heidegger didn't do it.

567
00:58:18,727 --> 00:58:21,644
He didn't say, "No,
I will not become rector."

568
00:58:21,731 --> 00:58:25,454
[interviewer, in English]

569
00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:27,488
[laughing]

570
00:58:27,513 --> 00:58:32,936
Well, that--
[laughing]

571
00:58:32,970 --> 00:58:35,413
Yeah, it is in a way
a counterpart,

572
00:58:35,439 --> 00:58:36,835
I suppose, yes.

573
00:58:37,788 --> 00:58:39,456
[bailiff shouts]

574
00:58:52,051 --> 00:58:53,884
[in Hebrew]

575
00:59:18,195 --> 00:59:21,491
[in German]

576
00:59:26,837 --> 00:59:29,572
[judge, in Hebrew]

577
00:59:29,906 --> 00:59:31,152
[Eichmann, in German]

578
00:59:31,212 --> 00:59:33,878
[spectators murmuring]

579
00:59:36,334 --> 00:59:37,335
[judge, in Hebrew]

580
00:59:37,823 --> 00:59:39,198
[gavel bangs]

581
00:59:57,363 --> 00:59:59,238
[Eichmann]

582
01:00:24,354 --> 01:00:26,521
[narration: Arendt] Of course
he wasn't an anti-Semite.

583
01:00:26,546 --> 01:00:28,715
He never hated his victims.

584
01:00:31,187 --> 01:00:33,509
Had Eichmann
been a bit less prim,

585
01:00:33,543 --> 01:00:35,960
or the police examination
less discrete,

586
01:00:36,313 --> 01:00:38,110
his so called lack of prejudice

587
01:00:38,135 --> 01:00:40,427
might have shown itself
in still another way.

588
01:00:41,581 --> 01:00:43,171
It seems that in Vienna,

589
01:00:43,238 --> 01:00:45,551
where he was so
extraordinarily successful

590
01:00:45,576 --> 01:00:48,616
in arranging
the forced emigration of Jews,

591
01:00:48,649 --> 01:00:52,466
he had a Jewish mistress,
an old flame from Linz.

592
01:00:54,028 --> 01:00:56,153
[judge]

593
01:00:58,948 --> 01:01:00,083
[Eichmann]

594
01:01:30,926 --> 01:01:33,199
[narration: Arendt]
He was certainly an idealist.

595
01:01:33,565 --> 01:01:35,843
An idealist,
according to Eichmann,

596
01:01:35,884 --> 01:01:38,634
isn't only someone
who believes in his idea,

597
01:01:38,696 --> 01:01:40,926
but he also
lives for this idea

598
01:01:41,236 --> 01:01:44,231
and he's ready to sacrifice
everything for it--

599
01:01:44,257 --> 01:01:46,141
and especially everyone.

600
01:01:46,197 --> 01:01:49,520
[man, indistinct]

601
01:01:49,592 --> 01:01:51,634
The longer
one listened to him,

602
01:01:51,676 --> 01:01:54,956
the more obvious it became
that his inability to speak

603
01:01:54,983 --> 01:01:57,986
was closely connected
with an inability to think,

604
01:01:58,576 --> 01:02:01,310
namely to think from the standpoint
of somebody else.

605
01:02:03,984 --> 01:02:06,926
And the German society
of 80 million people

606
01:02:06,968 --> 01:02:09,878
had been shielded against
reality and factuality

607
01:02:09,903 --> 01:02:11,707
by exactly the same means--

608
01:02:12,010 --> 01:02:14,779
the same self-deception,
lies and dumbness

609
01:02:14,858 --> 01:02:18,210
that had now become ingrained
in Eichmann's mentality.

610
01:02:19,265 --> 01:02:21,557
[seagulls squawking]

611
01:02:25,797 --> 01:02:28,297
[band: '30s jazz]

612
01:03:14,752 --> 01:03:16,906
I think
she believed Eichmann.

613
01:03:16,986 --> 01:03:19,978
She saw Eichmann
as the little man.

614
01:03:20,504 --> 01:03:23,003
She saw Eichmann
as the bureaucrat.

615
01:03:23,363 --> 01:03:25,620
She saw Eichmann
as the desk murderer.

616
01:03:25,645 --> 01:03:27,658
She fails to see--

617
01:03:28,064 --> 01:03:32,205
or fails to give enough
credence to the fact,

618
01:03:32,265 --> 01:03:36,939
or gravitas to the fact,
that this man is a...

619
01:03:38,010 --> 01:03:42,104
committed, in his heart,
anti-Semite.

620
01:03:42,131 --> 01:03:45,217
That he wasn't doing this
just because he was told.

621
01:03:45,259 --> 01:03:46,869
You know, "Move
these Jews here,"

622
01:03:46,903 --> 01:03:48,183
and so he moves them here.

623
01:03:48,236 --> 01:03:52,265
that he was, um--
[indistinct]-- aware.

624
01:03:52,290 --> 01:03:54,918
It was burning for him.
It was burning for him.

625
01:03:55,092 --> 01:03:57,704
Oh, no, I'm sure
he was anti-Semitic,

626
01:03:57,729 --> 01:04:00,439
and I'm sure
that he loved his führer

627
01:04:00,479 --> 01:04:04,969
and that he swore allegiance
to the Nazi ideology.

628
01:04:04,996 --> 01:04:07,494
I mean, there's no question
about that.

629
01:04:07,519 --> 01:04:10,670
So it is
this non-thinking adoption

630
01:04:10,716 --> 01:04:14,900
of fascist, racist ideologies

631
01:04:14,960 --> 01:04:19,281
which she is saying belongs
to a kind of new way of life,

632
01:04:19,314 --> 01:04:21,131
a new modality.

633
01:04:21,198 --> 01:04:22,551
It has become--

634
01:04:22,851 --> 01:04:25,543
Under those conditions,
it became normal.

635
01:04:26,230 --> 01:04:28,909
It is hideous that it's normal.

636
01:04:28,949 --> 01:04:31,723
It's hideous that it is banal.

637
01:04:32,240 --> 01:04:36,110
Right, if we say
that this evil became banal--

638
01:04:36,180 --> 01:04:38,612
ordinary, taken for granted,
normal--

639
01:04:38,652 --> 01:04:41,407
we are describing
a very hideous reality.

640
01:04:41,966 --> 01:04:44,180
So, she is not saying...

641
01:04:45,788 --> 01:04:48,787
it is banal. [laughing]

642
01:04:48,867 --> 01:04:52,509
She's saying it's a new form
of hideousness

643
01:04:52,655 --> 01:04:56,873
that is able to pass itself off
as the normal,

644
01:04:56,937 --> 01:04:59,495
which is why we have to be
all the more alert.

645
01:05:00,736 --> 01:05:03,906
Thinking is the place
where you actually inhabit

646
01:05:03,931 --> 01:05:06,453
an alienated space
from the norm.

647
01:05:07,426 --> 01:05:10,079
But Eichmann was anything
but alienated

648
01:05:10,125 --> 01:05:11,927
from his Nazi milieu.

649
01:05:11,953 --> 01:05:14,209
He was a proper Nazi subject.

650
01:05:16,444 --> 01:05:18,131
So, his homeliness...

651
01:05:19,498 --> 01:05:24,621
his dwelling in a Nazi milieu
is his banality.

652
01:05:24,854 --> 01:05:27,840
There was no dissonance.
It's not that he didn't know.

653
01:05:27,894 --> 01:05:30,217
But he didn't
experience dissonance

654
01:05:30,243 --> 01:05:33,014
between what he's doing,
necessarily, and what...

655
01:05:34,802 --> 01:05:35,842
the norm is.

656
01:05:35,880 --> 01:05:38,670
[orchestra: idyllic]

657
01:05:41,806 --> 01:05:45,223
[choir singing in German]

658
01:05:56,514 --> 01:05:57,908
[film narrator, in German]

659
01:06:23,838 --> 01:06:25,455
[narration: Arendt] It
is the monstrous claim

660
01:06:25,479 --> 01:06:29,092
of totalitarian rule
that it is completely legal.

661
01:06:29,704 --> 01:06:33,813
Far from being arbitrary, it is
obedient to superhuman forces.

662
01:06:35,366 --> 01:06:38,363
Far from wielding its power
in self-interest,

663
01:06:38,443 --> 01:06:41,916
it is quite prepared to sacrifice
everybody's vital interest

664
01:06:41,989 --> 01:06:46,323
to the execution of what it assumes
to be the law of history

665
01:06:46,383 --> 01:06:48,134
or the law of nature--

666
01:06:48,674 --> 01:06:51,175
the sources of authority
on all laws.

667
01:06:58,371 --> 01:07:01,680
The survival of the fittest
is as much an historical law

668
01:07:01,705 --> 01:07:03,551
as it is a natural law

669
01:07:03,596 --> 01:07:06,168
and could be used
by racism as such.

670
01:07:07,097 --> 01:07:09,389
The law of nature
and the law of history,

671
01:07:09,430 --> 01:07:11,180
if properly executed,

672
01:07:11,222 --> 01:07:14,543
are expected to produce
a new breed of human being.

673
01:07:21,690 --> 01:07:23,723
[film narrator]

674
01:07:39,698 --> 01:07:41,353
[narration: Arendt]
In the process of elimination

675
01:07:41,378 --> 01:07:44,763
of the objective enemy
of history or nature,

676
01:07:44,788 --> 01:07:46,680
of class or race,

677
01:07:46,721 --> 01:07:49,628
guilt and innocence
become senseless notions.

678
01:07:50,321 --> 01:07:54,601
Guilty is he who stands in the
way of natural or historical process

679
01:07:54,627 --> 01:07:57,805
which passed its judgment
over inferior races,

680
01:07:57,846 --> 01:08:00,617
over dying classes
and decadent people--

681
01:08:01,638 --> 01:08:03,829
the verdict of extermination.

682
01:08:27,585 --> 01:08:31,001
[crowd singing
 "La Marseillaise"]

683
01:08:59,825 --> 01:09:01,792
[narration: Arendt]
Man is a social animal,

684
01:09:01,854 --> 01:09:05,051
and life is not easy for him
when social ties are cut off.

685
01:09:06,615 --> 01:09:11,243
Lacking the courage to fight
for change to our social and legal status,

686
01:09:11,276 --> 01:09:15,257
we have decided instead, so many
of us, to try to change our identity.

687
01:09:30,471 --> 01:09:34,013
We don't want to be refugees,
since we don't want to be Jews.

688
01:09:35,036 --> 01:09:39,296
We don't call ourselves stateless because
the majority of stateless people are Jews.

689
01:09:40,236 --> 01:09:42,622
If patriotism
were a matter of practice,

690
01:09:42,695 --> 01:09:45,092
we should be the most patriotic
people in the world.

691
01:10:05,375 --> 01:10:08,336
The human being who has lost
his place in a community,

692
01:10:08,383 --> 01:10:10,951
his political status
in the struggle of the times

693
01:10:11,025 --> 01:10:12,554
and his legal persona

694
01:10:12,962 --> 01:10:16,249
loses the meaning of speech
and all human connections.

695
01:10:17,836 --> 01:10:20,653
He is left with those qualities
which usually become relevant

696
01:10:20,678 --> 01:10:22,512
only in the sphere
of his private life.

697
01:10:27,442 --> 01:10:29,692
This mere naked existence,
that is,

698
01:10:29,818 --> 01:10:32,164
all that is mysteriously
given to us by birth

699
01:10:32,189 --> 01:10:35,722
and which includes the shape of our
bodies and the talents of our minds,

700
01:10:35,755 --> 01:10:39,527
can be affirmed only by the
unpredictable friendship and sympathy--

701
01:10:40,367 --> 01:10:43,471
or by the great
and incalculable grace of love--

702
01:10:43,773 --> 01:10:46,513
which says,
"I want you to be,"

703
01:10:46,776 --> 01:10:51,319
without being able to give any particular
reason for such supreme affirmation.

704
01:11:02,343 --> 01:11:04,134
[in Hebrew]

705
01:11:36,682 --> 01:11:39,138
[narration: man]
May 1936. Paris.

706
01:11:39,985 --> 01:11:42,475
Dearest, I went back
from Clamart

707
01:11:42,522 --> 01:11:44,057
and want to continue
our conversation

708
01:11:44,117 --> 01:11:45,971
while your voice
is still fresh in my ear.

709
01:11:46,763 --> 01:11:48,567
I will send this letter
to your train

710
01:11:48,601 --> 01:11:51,690
so that it can accompany you
to the Zionist Congress in my place.

711
01:12:02,160 --> 01:12:03,997
This letter
won't get in the way

712
01:12:04,022 --> 01:12:05,763
of your discussion
with colleagues on the train,

713
01:12:06,108 --> 01:12:07,550
as I surely would have done,

714
01:12:08,318 --> 01:12:10,751
but will pounce on the first
free moment you have.

715
01:12:11,563 --> 01:12:14,346
With much devotion,
your Heinrich.

716
01:12:21,654 --> 01:12:22,921
[narration: Arendt]
My dear Heinrich,

717
01:12:23,614 --> 01:12:27,596
it became clear during my journey
how important all this is to me.

718
01:12:27,864 --> 01:12:31,731
I literally felt as if someone had
stripped the skin from my body.

719
01:12:32,093 --> 01:12:35,295
My remark about being
a young girl for you made me blush.

720
01:12:36,793 --> 01:12:40,086
What I meant was, if I'd only
met you ten years earlier.

721
01:12:41,140 --> 01:12:43,038
But in the meantime,
unfortunately,

722
01:12:43,063 --> 01:12:46,239
I was forced to some extent
to stop being a woman.

723
01:12:47,378 --> 01:12:50,744
Forgive me, my love, if you
can, for this brutal honesty.

724
01:12:53,779 --> 01:12:56,838
I wanted to dissolve my marriage
three years ago.

725
01:12:57,778 --> 01:13:01,348
Separation would've been the most
natural outcome for the other party,

726
01:13:01,373 --> 01:13:03,249
but he never thought
it was necessary.

727
01:13:16,853 --> 01:13:18,853
[paperboys calling in Hebrew]

728
01:13:23,963 --> 01:13:26,566
The Jewish Congress is to begin
in half an hour.

729
01:13:27,106 --> 01:13:31,148
The participants can be grouped into
messiah trumpeters and rationalists.

730
01:13:32,752 --> 01:13:36,691
I belong to the latter group, but with
a good dose of loudmouth thrown in.

731
01:13:38,017 --> 01:13:40,390
Because, my dear, for me,

732
01:13:40,423 --> 01:13:43,477
Palestine is the center
of our national aspirations

733
01:13:43,511 --> 01:13:46,241
not because 2,000 years ago
some people lived there

734
01:13:46,294 --> 01:13:48,411
from whom we are supposed
to be descended,

735
01:13:48,765 --> 01:13:52,752
but because, for 2,000 years,
the craziest of people took pleasure

736
01:13:52,786 --> 01:13:55,263
in preserving our past
in the present.

737
01:13:55,723 --> 01:14:00,492
Because for them, the ruins of
Jerusalem are rooted in the heart of time.

738
01:14:02,000 --> 01:14:04,671
Think of me
and don't forget how to kiss.

739
01:14:05,158 --> 01:14:06,263
Hannah.

740
01:14:06,933 --> 01:14:08,230
The Jew as pariah,

741
01:14:08,270 --> 01:14:13,024
which was her main obsession
in the '30s and '40s--

742
01:14:13,057 --> 01:14:16,168
the notion
that the Jew was displaced

743
01:14:16,203 --> 01:14:19,980
by not having
a political home...

744
01:14:21,539 --> 01:14:26,842
made her very energetic
in the Zionist movement.

745
01:14:26,896 --> 01:14:29,359
She had a very close friendship
with Kurt Blumenfeld.

746
01:14:29,399 --> 01:14:31,854
She was a--
She was a real Zionist.

747
01:14:31,928 --> 01:14:33,888
[in Hebrew]

748
01:15:24,292 --> 01:15:25,945
[narration: Arendt]
My dear friend, Heinrich,

749
01:15:26,399 --> 01:15:28,498
That indeed is the question.

750
01:15:28,704 --> 01:15:32,596
Can I take the seat at your side
that you have generously offered me?

751
01:15:33,323 --> 01:15:35,666
The reason it is so terrible
to be a Jewess

752
01:15:35,691 --> 01:15:38,875
is because one must constantly
legitimize oneself.

753
01:15:38,961 --> 01:15:41,014
I am of the opinion
that one cannot

754
01:15:41,061 --> 01:15:43,498
and must never
legitimize oneself.

755
01:15:43,850 --> 01:15:46,940
It is always others who had
to do the legitimizing

756
01:15:46,965 --> 01:15:49,316
and these others in my life
have not wanted to.

757
01:15:49,356 --> 01:15:51,368
And I do not fit
into a tradition

758
01:15:51,393 --> 01:15:54,480
in which a simple stroke of the pen
can cross me out.

759
01:15:55,587 --> 01:15:58,591
Look, you said yourself,
"Everything speaks against us."

760
01:15:59,011 --> 01:16:00,641
What is this "everything"
apart from the

761
01:16:00,688 --> 01:16:03,036
prejudices that I'm a
Jew and you are not?

762
01:16:04,282 --> 01:16:06,471
I think that I love you.
I mean it.

763
01:16:07,199 --> 01:16:10,325
I kiss your mouth and nose. H.

764
01:16:14,688 --> 01:16:16,049
[narration: Blücher] Dearest,

765
01:16:16,074 --> 01:16:17,689
Your letter arrived yesterday.

766
01:16:18,103 --> 01:16:21,281
I can breathe again,
filling myself with your love.

767
01:16:22,368 --> 01:16:23,628
I believe you.

768
01:16:23,668 --> 01:16:25,767
Many women have told me
they loved me,

769
01:16:26,001 --> 01:16:28,013
but I never believed
a single one of them.

770
01:16:28,764 --> 01:16:30,554
One thing I know for certain,

771
01:16:30,936 --> 01:16:35,575
with you, there can be no lasting
contradiction between words and actions.

772
01:16:36,415 --> 01:16:39,097
Hannah, we shouldn't be ashamed.

773
01:16:39,763 --> 01:16:41,156
It is our great love.

774
01:16:41,536 --> 01:16:43,389
Let's lose ourselves in it
completely.

775
01:16:44,156 --> 01:16:46,493
Many kisses, Heinrich.

776
01:16:47,219 --> 01:16:48,530
[narration: Arendt]
Well, my love,

777
01:16:48,630 --> 01:16:51,149
whether I can be your wife,
I don't know.

778
01:16:51,502 --> 01:16:53,044
My doubts have not disappeared,

779
01:16:53,086 --> 01:16:55,044
and neither has the fact
that I'm married.

780
01:16:56,876 --> 01:17:00,292
Until now, I didn't notice
much of the hell that my home was,

781
01:17:00,506 --> 01:17:03,214
for I was working like a horse
and was almost never there.

782
01:17:04,369 --> 01:17:08,256
Now divorce is inevitable. H.

783
01:17:10,752 --> 01:17:12,669
-[sirens wailing]
-[whistle blowing]

784
01:17:23,023 --> 01:17:24,898
[no audible dialogue]

785
01:17:34,937 --> 01:17:37,081
[narration: Arendt] No,
something is very wrong

786
01:17:37,121 --> 01:17:38,436
with our optimism.

787
01:17:38,625 --> 01:17:41,629
We were expelled from Germany
because we were Jews.

788
01:17:41,858 --> 01:17:44,024
But as soon as we crossed
the French border,

789
01:17:44,086 --> 01:17:46,908
we were seen as bochurs,
yeshiva boys.

790
01:17:47,627 --> 01:17:51,752
In the meantime, most of us had indeed
become such loyal Frenchmen

791
01:17:51,794 --> 01:17:55,029
that we didn't even criticize
the French government's decrees.

792
01:18:08,919 --> 01:18:12,318
So we declared it was all right
to be interned.

793
01:18:12,419 --> 01:18:16,329
We were the first voluntary prisoners
that history had ever seen.

794
01:18:17,282 --> 01:18:19,294
After the Germans
invaded the country,

795
01:18:19,335 --> 01:18:21,539
they had only to change
the name of the firm.

796
01:18:22,008 --> 01:18:24,234
Having been jailed
because we are Germans,

797
01:18:24,846 --> 01:18:27,029
we were not freed
because we are Jews.

798
01:18:45,590 --> 01:18:47,507
[boat horn blows]

799
01:19:43,836 --> 01:19:47,419
[Kohn] Coming from
the darkness of Germany,

800
01:19:47,461 --> 01:19:51,669
she came to this country
and she saw--

801
01:19:51,711 --> 01:19:53,502
She saw plurality,

802
01:19:53,584 --> 01:19:55,916
and she saw diversity,

803
01:19:56,170 --> 01:20:00,586
and she saw things that
she had never seen before--

804
01:20:00,627 --> 01:20:03,218
the mix, the nationalities.

805
01:20:03,251 --> 01:20:04,358
She loved that.

806
01:20:04,451 --> 01:20:07,544
Yes, there was
a kind of idealization,

807
01:20:07,586 --> 01:20:11,033
but she did see these
political principles here.

808
01:20:11,058 --> 01:20:12,461
The fact that we are plural,

809
01:20:12,502 --> 01:20:14,836
that is definitely
a condition of human freedom.

810
01:20:14,878 --> 01:20:18,140
The fact that we can think,
the fact that we can act.

811
01:20:18,174 --> 01:20:19,836
Insofar as we are human,

812
01:20:19,878 --> 01:20:23,705
we are capable of
spontaneous thought and action.

813
01:20:24,241 --> 01:20:26,420
I would-- I would...

814
01:20:27,590 --> 01:20:28,957
right now agree with that.

815
01:20:29,681 --> 01:20:31,556
-[horns honking]
-[crowd cheering]

816
01:20:46,150 --> 01:20:48,817
[Arendt, in German]

817
01:22:00,283 --> 01:22:05,640
[crowd shouting]
 Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

818
01:22:05,683 --> 01:22:06,717
[narration: Arendt] Totalitarian

819
01:22:06,750 --> 01:22:09,294
rulers rely on the
tyranny of logic,

820
01:22:09,692 --> 01:22:11,365
against which nothing stands

821
01:22:11,401 --> 01:22:14,657
but the great capacity of men
to start something new...

822
01:22:15,571 --> 01:22:17,212
to think something new.

823
01:22:18,832 --> 01:22:22,251
[shouting continues]

824
01:22:30,070 --> 01:22:35,211
As terror is needed to prevent that with
which the birth of each new human being,

825
01:22:35,286 --> 01:22:38,794
a new beginning arises
and raises its voice unto the world.

826
01:22:40,591 --> 01:22:44,128
So, the self-coercive force
of logicality is needed,

827
01:22:44,170 --> 01:22:46,769
lest anybody
ever start thinking,

828
01:22:47,169 --> 01:22:50,241
which as the freest and purest
of all human activities,

829
01:22:50,266 --> 01:22:53,923
is the very opposite of the
compulsory process of logic

830
01:22:54,162 --> 01:22:56,518
that ideologies
are using all the time.

831
01:22:57,290 --> 01:23:01,331
[crowd saluting]

832
01:23:48,655 --> 01:23:51,800
A world in which men are taught
they are superfluous,

833
01:23:51,846 --> 01:23:55,419
in which punishment is meted out
without connection to crime

834
01:23:55,461 --> 01:23:57,866
and where work is performed
without product

835
01:23:57,946 --> 01:24:01,174
is a place where senselessness
is produced anew daily.

836
01:24:02,561 --> 01:24:05,431
Yet within the framework
of totalitarian ideology,

837
01:24:05,484 --> 01:24:07,586
nothing can be more logical.

838
01:24:07,901 --> 01:24:09,705
If the inmate is vermin,

839
01:24:09,799 --> 01:24:12,594
it is logical that it will
be killed by poison gas.

840
01:24:13,094 --> 01:24:14,242
If they are degenerate,

841
01:24:14,289 --> 01:24:17,121
they should not be allowed
to contaminate the population.

842
01:24:17,188 --> 01:24:18,965
If they have slavelike souls,

843
01:24:18,993 --> 01:24:21,762
no one should waste his time
trying to re-educate them.

844
01:24:26,340 --> 01:24:30,310
It is precisely for the sake
of its messianic sense of redemption

845
01:24:30,350 --> 01:24:33,687
that it's necessary
for totalitarianism to destroy

846
01:24:33,712 --> 01:24:36,981
every trace
of what we call human dignity.

847
01:24:39,332 --> 01:24:41,165
For respect for human dignity

848
01:24:41,192 --> 01:24:44,679
implies the recognition of the uniqueness
of my fellow men

849
01:24:44,733 --> 01:24:48,058
or our fellow nations
as builders of many worlds

850
01:24:48,425 --> 01:24:52,821
and as co-builders of one common world
shared by all.

851
01:25:09,971 --> 01:25:11,846
[man, in German]

852
01:25:29,269 --> 01:25:32,620
[Arendt, in German]

853
01:29:28,471 --> 01:29:31,495
[interviewer, in German]

854
01:29:53,494 --> 01:29:55,994
[Arendt, in German]

855
01:30:41,470 --> 01:30:44,221
[phonograph: up-tempo]

856
01:30:54,036 --> 01:30:56,494
[woman vocalizing]

857
01:30:59,579 --> 01:31:02,329
[singing in German]

858
01:31:28,589 --> 01:31:30,963
[narration: Arendt] It is not
so much the barbed wire

859
01:31:31,005 --> 01:31:34,718
as the skillfully manufactured unreality
of those whom it fences in

860
01:31:34,751 --> 01:31:37,593
that provokes
such enormous cruelties

861
01:31:38,005 --> 01:31:41,939
and ultimately makes extermination look
like a perfectly normal measure.

862
01:31:44,047 --> 01:31:46,506
Everything that was done
in the camps is known to us

863
01:31:46,547 --> 01:31:49,888
from the world of perverse,
malignant fantasies.

864
01:31:50,880 --> 01:31:53,047
The difficult thing
to understand

865
01:31:53,089 --> 01:31:56,672
is that these gruesome crimes
took place in a phantom world,

866
01:31:56,714 --> 01:31:59,897
which however, has materialized,
as it were, into a world

867
01:31:59,946 --> 01:32:04,038
which is complete with all
the sensual data of reality.

868
01:32:07,297 --> 01:32:10,156
Suddenly it becomes evident
that the power of man

869
01:32:10,202 --> 01:32:13,047
is greater than one ever
dared to think

870
01:32:13,341 --> 01:32:16,261
and that man can realize
hellish fantasies

871
01:32:16,286 --> 01:32:19,735
without making the sky fall
or the earth open.

872
01:32:26,863 --> 01:32:29,529
[people chattering]

873
01:32:39,905 --> 01:32:42,280
[no audible dialogue]

874
01:33:12,668 --> 01:33:14,752
[interviewer, in German]

875
01:33:24,015 --> 01:33:25,891
[Arendt, in German]

876
01:34:42,234 --> 01:34:46,144
[crowd clamoring, shouting]

877
01:34:51,522 --> 01:34:53,824
[narration: Arendt]
The well-known fact that the actual work

878
01:34:53,860 --> 01:34:56,485
of killing
in the extermination centers

879
01:34:56,526 --> 01:34:58,318
and keeping order in the ghettos

880
01:34:58,360 --> 01:35:01,318
was usually in the hands
of Jewish commandos

881
01:35:01,360 --> 01:35:03,936
had been fairly established
by the prosecution.

882
01:35:04,568 --> 01:35:06,900
But this was only horrible.

883
01:35:07,176 --> 01:35:09,142
It was not a moral problem.

884
01:35:10,072 --> 01:35:13,072
It was true that the Jewish people
had not been organized,

885
01:35:13,110 --> 01:35:14,693
that they had possessed
no land,

886
01:35:14,735 --> 01:35:17,226
had no government
and no army,

887
01:35:17,266 --> 01:35:19,151
no youth
with military training.

888
01:35:19,537 --> 01:35:22,860
But the whole truth was that
the Jewish leadership cooperated

889
01:35:22,902 --> 01:35:25,186
in one way or another
with the Nazis.

890
01:35:26,902 --> 01:35:28,651
The whole truth was that,

891
01:35:28,696 --> 01:35:31,957
if the Jewish people had really
been unorganized and leaderless,

892
01:35:32,035 --> 01:35:34,856
there would have been chaos
and plenty of misery,

893
01:35:35,234 --> 01:35:38,120
but the total number of victims
would hardly have been

894
01:35:38,174 --> 01:35:41,392
between four and a half
and six million people.

895
01:36:02,499 --> 01:36:04,336
What she says about
the Jewish councils,

896
01:36:04,396 --> 01:36:06,096
which became
such a major thing,

897
01:36:06,127 --> 01:36:08,003
is really a small part
of the book.

898
01:36:08,066 --> 01:36:10,437
The way she phrased it
was irresponsible.

899
01:36:11,024 --> 01:36:13,143
Nobody could say how many less

900
01:36:13,184 --> 01:36:15,193
million people would be killed

901
01:36:15,234 --> 01:36:17,584
if you didn't have
the Jewish leaders.

902
01:36:17,657 --> 01:36:20,193
But at the same time,

903
01:36:20,303 --> 01:36:24,066
you know, even if you read
the extensive literature

904
01:36:24,100 --> 01:36:26,693
on the Jewish council,

905
01:36:26,735 --> 01:36:29,818
there were heroes, people
who committed suicide,

906
01:36:29,860 --> 01:36:32,248
people who really
wanted to protect--

907
01:36:32,302 --> 01:36:35,501
The complexities come--
come out,

908
01:36:35,547 --> 01:36:37,544
but it was also scandalous.

909
01:36:37,578 --> 01:36:39,860
[in Hebrew]

910
01:37:15,943 --> 01:37:18,027
[man, in Hebrew]

911
01:37:27,090 --> 01:37:28,924
[interrogator]

912
01:37:30,745 --> 01:37:33,250
[interrogator 2]

913
01:37:36,761 --> 01:37:38,720
[man 2]

914
01:37:51,896 --> 01:37:54,436
[interrogator]

915
01:37:56,016 --> 01:37:58,512
[man 2]

916
01:38:57,743 --> 01:39:00,389
[narration: Arendt]
In Amsterdam as in Warsaw,

917
01:39:00,436 --> 01:39:02,862
in Berlin as in Budapest,

918
01:39:03,265 --> 01:39:05,432
Jewish officials
could be trusted

919
01:39:05,460 --> 01:39:08,627
to compile the lists of persons
and of their property.

920
01:39:09,431 --> 01:39:13,152
We know how the officials felt when
they became instruments of murder.

921
01:39:14,076 --> 01:39:16,850
Like captains whose ships
were about to sink

922
01:39:17,118 --> 01:39:19,659
and who succeeded
in bringing them safe to port

923
01:39:19,701 --> 01:39:23,419
by casting overboard a great
part of their precious cargo.

924
01:39:23,909 --> 01:39:28,045
Like saviors, who with a hundred
victims save a thousand people;

925
01:39:28,160 --> 01:39:30,393
with a thousand, 10,000.

926
01:39:31,534 --> 01:39:34,899
In order not to leave
the selection to blind fate,

927
01:39:35,076 --> 01:39:38,452
a truly holy principle was
needed as the guiding force

928
01:39:38,493 --> 01:39:41,452
of the weak human hand
which puts down on paper

929
01:39:41,493 --> 01:39:43,691
the name of the unknown person

930
01:39:44,243 --> 01:39:46,946
and, with this,
decides his life or death.

931
01:39:48,394 --> 01:39:51,565
To a Jew, this role
of the Jewish leaders

932
01:39:51,604 --> 01:39:53,686
in the destruction
of their own people

933
01:39:53,710 --> 01:39:57,490
is undoubtedly the darkest chapter
of the whole dark story.

934
01:39:59,881 --> 01:40:01,797
[in Hebrew]

935
01:40:27,123 --> 01:40:30,242
I am even more
struck today

936
01:40:30,269 --> 01:40:32,034
than I was 30 years ago

937
01:40:32,281 --> 01:40:36,343
by the historical
ignorance she displays

938
01:40:36,427 --> 01:40:41,477
in her general
and global accusations.

939
01:40:41,550 --> 01:40:46,576
It was easy for her
to consult any history of that period,

940
01:40:46,617 --> 01:40:49,659
to be more nuanced
and to write differently.

941
01:40:49,900 --> 01:40:50,833
She regretted it.

942
01:40:50,869 --> 01:40:53,007
When I interviewed her
ten years later,

943
01:40:53,076 --> 01:40:56,099
she said in a rather
sober tone that--

944
01:40:56,220 --> 01:40:59,142
Although there was an organized
campaign against her

945
01:40:59,182 --> 01:41:02,030
by the Jewish establishment
in the United States

946
01:41:02,055 --> 01:41:02,928
and Israel.

947
01:41:02,953 --> 01:41:07,457
But she said, "I also
irritated many honest,

948
01:41:07,482 --> 01:41:08,536
decent people."

949
01:41:08,569 --> 01:41:11,093
And she seemed
to regret deeply that.

950
01:41:25,092 --> 01:41:27,592
[Arendt, in German]

951
01:42:36,617 --> 01:42:39,565
The Christian world
owes to the Jew,

952
01:42:39,631 --> 01:42:43,197
reparation for all
the centuries of wrong

953
01:42:43,243 --> 01:42:46,118
and hurt and humiliation,

954
01:42:46,378 --> 01:42:50,761
reparation for the awful
and tragic Hitler years.

955
01:42:51,627 --> 01:42:55,492
That reparation will be
a free and democratic

956
01:42:55,539 --> 01:42:58,409
Jewish commonwealth
in Eretz Israel,

957
01:42:58,456 --> 01:43:02,160
even though it means little
or nothing for other people.

958
01:43:02,590 --> 01:43:03,701
Terrorism must--

959
01:43:03,743 --> 01:43:05,854
[narration: Arendt]
American Zionists, from left to right,

960
01:43:05,887 --> 01:43:07,924
adopted unanimously the demand

961
01:43:07,978 --> 01:43:10,743
for a free and democratic
Jewish commonwealth,

962
01:43:11,029 --> 01:43:13,552
which shall embrace
the whole of Palestine.

963
01:43:15,058 --> 01:43:17,909
This is a turning point
in Zionist history,

964
01:43:18,184 --> 01:43:20,497
for it means that
the revisionist program,

965
01:43:20,543 --> 01:43:24,677
so long bitterly repudiated,
has finally proved victorious.

966
01:43:25,464 --> 01:43:29,058
This time, the Arabs were simply
not mentioned in the solution,

967
01:43:29,083 --> 01:43:30,647
which obviously
leaves them the choice

968
01:43:30,695 --> 01:43:34,476
between voluntary emigration
and second-class citizenship.

969
01:43:34,525 --> 01:43:36,982
[sirens wailing in distance]

970
01:43:51,687 --> 01:43:52,646
[narration: Arendt]
A home that my

971
01:43:52,671 --> 01:43:55,560
neighbor does not
recognize is not a home.

972
01:43:56,059 --> 01:43:59,012
A Jewish national home
that is not recognized

973
01:43:59,043 --> 01:44:02,346
and not respected by its neighboring
people is not a home

974
01:44:02,413 --> 01:44:03,579
but an illusion,

975
01:44:03,909 --> 01:44:05,643
until it becomes
a battlefield.

976
01:44:08,498 --> 01:44:10,775
This is proof
of the illusionist, utopian

977
01:44:10,800 --> 01:44:13,778
and apolitical element that has
so often been a part

978
01:44:13,846 --> 01:44:15,975
of Jewish politics
in Palestine

979
01:44:16,507 --> 01:44:20,070
and which first expresses itself
in an overestimation

980
01:44:20,095 --> 01:44:23,269
of what was practical
and opportunistic.

981
01:44:38,736 --> 01:44:40,736
[no audible dialogue]

982
01:44:50,229 --> 01:44:53,335
Socialism, which was once
an inspiring source

983
01:44:53,360 --> 01:44:55,619
of the revolutionary
labor movement,

984
01:44:55,987 --> 01:44:59,234
laid the heavy hand
of dialectical necessity

985
01:44:59,297 --> 01:45:01,940
upon the heads and hearts
of its followers

986
01:45:02,610 --> 01:45:07,254
until they were willing to fit into almost
any inhuman conditions.

987
01:45:14,117 --> 01:45:16,280
Another traditionally
Zionist feeling

988
01:45:16,325 --> 01:45:19,505
that has by now seized
all sections of Jewish people

989
01:45:19,735 --> 01:45:22,209
is the cynical
and deep-rooted conviction

990
01:45:22,234 --> 01:45:24,491
that all gentiles
are anti-Semitic

991
01:45:24,709 --> 01:45:27,961
and everybody and everything
is against the Jews.

992
01:45:37,531 --> 01:45:41,630
The notion that we can use our enemies
for our own salvation

993
01:45:41,684 --> 01:45:45,602
has always been for me
the original sin of Zionism.

994
01:45:46,655 --> 01:45:50,918
Thus the socialist revolutionary
Jewish national movement

995
01:45:50,951 --> 01:45:55,139
which started half a century ago
with ideas so lofty

996
01:45:55,199 --> 01:45:58,662
that it overlooked the particular
realities of the Middle East

997
01:45:58,736 --> 01:46:01,060
and the general wickedness
of the world

998
01:46:01,106 --> 01:46:04,323
has ended--
as do most such movements--

999
01:46:04,357 --> 01:46:06,134
with unequivocal support

1000
01:46:06,174 --> 01:46:09,631
not only of national,
but of chauvinist claims,

1001
01:46:09,704 --> 01:46:12,358
not against enemies
of the Jewish people

1002
01:46:12,383 --> 01:46:16,262
but against its possible friends
and present neighbors.

1003
01:46:16,308 --> 01:46:19,812
Obviously, this attitude
is plain racist chauvinism

1004
01:46:19,912 --> 01:46:21,596
and it is equally obvious

1005
01:46:21,662 --> 01:46:24,713
that this division between
Jews and all other people--

1006
01:46:24,753 --> 01:46:26,658
who are to be classed
as enemies--

1007
01:46:26,683 --> 01:46:29,797
does not differ from
other master race theories.

1008
01:46:34,020 --> 01:46:36,900
I think just as
she thought the Germans

1009
01:46:37,560 --> 01:46:39,024
ought to have
lived with the Jews

1010
01:46:39,051 --> 01:46:41,239
and the other minorities,

1011
01:46:41,583 --> 01:46:45,253
she thought the Jews had to live
with the Palestinians

1012
01:46:45,713 --> 01:46:47,981
and that the whites
had to live with the blacks.

1013
01:46:48,015 --> 01:46:50,072
[laughs] And--

1014
01:46:50,358 --> 01:46:53,415
And that plurality--

1015
01:46:53,468 --> 01:46:57,937
this idea of plurality--
was...

1016
01:46:57,998 --> 01:47:02,156
essential to our way of living
together politically.

1017
01:47:02,228 --> 01:47:05,854
There was no doing away
with plurality. Right?

1018
01:47:05,947 --> 01:47:07,446
If you try to do away
with plurality,

1019
01:47:07,471 --> 01:47:09,014
you become genocidal.

1020
01:47:09,776 --> 01:47:10,817
Okay?

1021
01:47:10,849 --> 01:47:13,573
That just seems
absolutely crucial to me.

1022
01:47:13,670 --> 01:47:18,133
So that has become
very important to my thinking.

1023
01:47:18,697 --> 01:47:19,948
And--

1024
01:47:21,345 --> 01:47:23,709
It's amazing how angry
people get at you, though,

1025
01:47:24,396 --> 01:47:25,898
when you say things like this.

1026
01:47:25,964 --> 01:47:29,037
[laughing] I don't know
why they get so angry.

1027
01:47:29,072 --> 01:47:31,400
It seems kind of commonsensical.

1028
01:47:59,782 --> 01:48:01,602
[narration: Jaspers]
December 1945.

1029
01:48:02,532 --> 01:48:03,930
Dear Hannah Arendt,

1030
01:48:04,518 --> 01:48:07,082
Tears came to my eyes
as I read your letter.

1031
01:48:07,715 --> 01:48:10,008
I felt how rare
that spirit is.

1032
01:48:11,657 --> 01:48:14,042
Yes, the few
mustn't be too few.

1033
01:48:14,736 --> 01:48:17,342
But the very few suffice
to give one hope.

1034
01:48:21,593 --> 01:48:23,133
Tell me about your life.

1035
01:48:23,824 --> 01:48:27,032
How bemused you would be
if you came into our apartment here.

1036
01:48:27,073 --> 01:48:29,867
It's the same rooms,
as if nothing had happened.

1037
01:48:30,733 --> 01:48:33,032
You could sit in the chair
at my desk again,

1038
01:48:33,073 --> 01:48:35,425
the way you used to
as a doctoral candidate.

1039
01:48:38,039 --> 01:48:39,632
Yet everything is different.

1040
01:48:40,159 --> 01:48:43,118
This is only a ghostly
continuation from the past

1041
01:48:43,163 --> 01:48:45,804
that made its way
into this transformed world.

1042
01:48:51,782 --> 01:48:54,715
Shocking voices rise
from the Nuremberg trials.

1043
01:48:55,108 --> 01:48:56,970
It will take time
to figure them out.

1044
01:48:57,903 --> 01:49:01,438
With warmest wishes.
Yours, Karl Jaspers.

1045
01:49:05,032 --> 01:49:07,032
[man] Will you explain
to the tribunal

1046
01:49:07,073 --> 01:49:10,125
why you believe
that the type of execution

1047
01:49:10,150 --> 01:49:14,875
ordered by you was preferable
to the shooting in the neck?

1048
01:49:15,974 --> 01:49:17,255
[in German]

1049
01:50:27,782 --> 01:50:30,116
[crowd cheering]

1050
01:50:48,630 --> 01:50:50,356
[narration: Arendt]
My beloved teacher,

1051
01:50:50,903 --> 01:50:52,866
If I were sitting
on your chair,

1052
01:50:53,075 --> 01:50:55,073
I would have probably
told you more.

1053
01:50:55,166 --> 01:50:58,812
I am married again,
for nine years, to a German.

1054
01:50:59,342 --> 01:51:02,675
And I haven't become
more respectable in any way.

1055
01:51:03,248 --> 01:51:05,324
If I had wanted
to become respectable,

1056
01:51:05,365 --> 01:51:08,782
I would have either have had
to give up my interest in Jewish affairs

1057
01:51:08,824 --> 01:51:11,490
or not marry a non-Jewish man,

1058
01:51:11,718 --> 01:51:14,124
either option equally inhuman.

1059
01:51:21,160 --> 01:51:24,560
Regarding Heidegger's
behavior in 1933,

1060
01:51:25,247 --> 01:51:28,830
it is a fact that he prohibited
his teacher and friend,

1061
01:51:28,855 --> 01:51:30,546
Professor Edmund Husserl,

1062
01:51:30,639 --> 01:51:33,723
to enter the Philosophy faculty
because he was a Jew.

1063
01:51:34,384 --> 01:51:36,987
I know that this letter
was an official form,

1064
01:51:37,337 --> 01:51:40,561
and I know that many people
have excused it for that reason.

1065
01:51:41,327 --> 01:51:44,438
It always seemed to me
that the moment Heidegger

1066
01:51:44,465 --> 01:51:46,782
was obliged to put his name
to this document,

1067
01:51:46,830 --> 01:51:48,452
he should have resigned.

1068
01:51:49,095 --> 01:51:51,012
However foolish
he may have been,

1069
01:51:51,040 --> 01:51:53,393
he was capable
of understanding that.

1070
01:51:53,903 --> 01:51:57,052
Now you might say that
this happened in the rush of business.

1071
01:51:57,077 --> 01:52:01,160
And I would probably reply that
the truly irreparable things

1072
01:52:01,193 --> 01:52:04,878
happen often and deceptively,
almost like accidents

1073
01:52:05,160 --> 01:52:08,384
and when one steps easily
across the red line,

1074
01:52:08,528 --> 01:52:11,641
feeling certain that it is
of no consequence anymore.

1075
01:52:14,464 --> 01:52:18,845
That wall which rises up
is what truly divides people.

1076
01:52:19,772 --> 01:52:21,327
In other words, because I know

1077
01:52:21,368 --> 01:52:23,618
that this signature
almost killed Husserl,

1078
01:52:23,660 --> 01:52:26,736
I can't help but regard Heidegger
as a potential murderer.

1079
01:52:29,994 --> 01:52:32,677
You'll be familiar with
the various interviews he gave.

1080
01:52:33,368 --> 01:52:35,962
Nothing but insane lies
with, what I think,

1081
01:52:36,002 --> 01:52:38,244
is clearly
a pathological streak.

1082
01:52:38,939 --> 01:52:42,618
And then, of course, this whole
intricate and childish dishonesty

1083
01:52:42,660 --> 01:52:44,958
must have crept
into his philosophizing.

1084
01:52:48,182 --> 01:52:50,683
Yours, as always, Hannah.

1085
01:53:10,679 --> 01:53:12,554
[no audible dialogue]

1086
01:53:30,702 --> 01:53:32,761
What stuck in the mind
of these men

1087
01:53:32,808 --> 01:53:35,334
who had become murderers
was simply the notion

1088
01:53:35,372 --> 01:53:38,213
of being involved
in something historic,

1089
01:53:38,273 --> 01:53:40,337
grandiose and unique.

1090
01:53:40,970 --> 01:53:43,058
This was important
because the murderers

1091
01:53:43,098 --> 01:53:45,644
were not sadists
or killers by nature.

1092
01:53:45,944 --> 01:53:50,868
Hence, the problem was how to
overcome their animal instinct of pity,

1093
01:53:50,933 --> 01:53:53,102
by which all normal men
are affected

1094
01:53:53,142 --> 01:53:55,010
in the presence
of physical suffering.

1095
01:53:56,063 --> 01:53:59,169
The trick was very simple
and probably very effective.

1096
01:53:59,596 --> 01:54:02,327
It consisted of turning
these instincts around

1097
01:54:02,368 --> 01:54:04,945
and of directing them
towards the self.

1098
01:54:05,007 --> 01:54:09,257
So instead of saying,
"What horrible things I did to people!"

1099
01:54:09,391 --> 01:54:11,600
The murderers
would be able to say,

1100
01:54:11,649 --> 01:54:15,107
"What horrible things
I had to watch and do

1101
01:54:15,202 --> 01:54:18,087
and how heavily the task
weighed upon my shoulders."

1102
01:54:28,451 --> 01:54:31,401
At the same time,
the human need for justice

1103
01:54:31,426 --> 01:54:33,485
can find no satisfactory reply

1104
01:54:33,524 --> 01:54:36,984
in considering all German people
as equally guilty.

1105
01:54:40,723 --> 01:54:44,107
Where all are considered guilty,
nobody can be judged.

1106
01:54:44,800 --> 01:54:46,477
For that guilt
is not accompanied

1107
01:54:46,516 --> 01:54:49,347
by even the mere pretense
of responsibility.

1108
01:54:51,431 --> 01:54:54,279
Guilt implies
the consciousness of guilt,

1109
01:54:54,779 --> 01:54:56,856
and punishment
requires evidence

1110
01:54:56,896 --> 01:54:59,542
that the criminal
is a responsible person.

1111
01:55:03,567 --> 01:55:06,517
It has been well described
by an American correspondent

1112
01:55:06,571 --> 01:55:10,198
in a dialogue he conducted in
the Majdanek concentration camp.

1113
01:55:14,177 --> 01:55:16,879
Question: "Did you kill
people in the camp?"

1114
01:55:16,919 --> 01:55:18,783
Answer: "Yes."

1115
01:55:19,443 --> 01:55:21,743
Question:
"Did you bury them alive?"

1116
01:55:21,785 --> 01:55:23,537
Answer: "Yes."

1117
01:55:24,731 --> 01:55:28,233
Question: "Did you personally
help kill people?"

1118
01:55:29,160 --> 01:55:31,451
Answer: "Absolutely not."

1119
01:55:31,677 --> 01:55:33,660
I was only a paymaster
in the camp.

1120
01:55:34,167 --> 01:55:37,247
Question: "What did you think
of what was going on?"

1121
01:55:37,553 --> 01:55:42,160
Answer: "It was bad at first,
but we got used to it."

1122
01:55:42,623 --> 01:55:45,629
Question: "Do you know
the Russians will hang you?"

1123
01:55:46,375 --> 01:55:50,278
Answer: Bursting into tears,
"Why should they?

1124
01:55:50,325 --> 01:55:51,569
What have I done?"

1125
01:55:52,119 --> 01:55:53,782
Really, he had done nothing.

1126
01:55:54,189 --> 01:55:56,068
He had only carried out orders.

1127
01:55:56,122 --> 01:55:59,222
And since when has it been
a crime to carry out orders?

1128
01:55:59,262 --> 01:56:01,704
Since when has it been
a virtue to rebel?

1129
01:56:01,729 --> 01:56:05,292
Since when could one only
be decent by welcoming death?

1130
01:56:05,837 --> 01:56:07,664
What then had he done?

1131
01:56:27,665 --> 01:56:30,041
For many years now,
we have met Germans

1132
01:56:30,082 --> 01:56:32,715
who declare they are ashamed
of being Germans.

1133
01:56:33,458 --> 01:56:35,082
I have often felt
tempted to answer

1134
01:56:35,124 --> 01:56:37,149
that I am ashamed
of being human.

1135
01:56:48,443 --> 01:56:50,436
For the idea of humanity,

1136
01:56:50,665 --> 01:56:52,624
when purged
of all sentimentality,

1137
01:56:52,665 --> 01:56:54,935
has the very serious consequence

1138
01:56:55,008 --> 01:56:57,141
that men must assume
responsibility

1139
01:56:57,174 --> 01:56:59,353
for all crimes
committed by men

1140
01:56:59,920 --> 01:57:04,252
and that all nations share the onus of
evil committed by all others.

1141
01:57:11,249 --> 01:57:14,475
Shame at being a human
is the purely individual

1142
01:57:14,513 --> 01:57:17,219
and nonpolitical expression
of this insight.

1143
01:57:18,220 --> 01:57:20,953
To follow
a non-imperialistic policy

1144
01:57:20,980 --> 01:57:23,082
and maintain a nonracist faith

1145
01:57:23,150 --> 01:57:25,225
becomes more and more difficult

1146
01:57:25,799 --> 01:57:28,062
because it becomes
clearer every day

1147
01:57:28,110 --> 01:57:31,815
how great a burden
mankind is for man.

1148
01:58:01,106 --> 01:58:02,859
[narration: Arendt]
Hilda, my dear friend,

1149
01:58:03,772 --> 01:58:05,333
I left Freiburg yesterday,

1150
01:58:05,374 --> 01:58:08,097
where I went to retrieve
abandoned Jewish property.

1151
01:58:09,863 --> 01:58:11,624
If not for that purpose,

1152
01:58:11,665 --> 01:58:13,565
would I have gone
to meet Heidegger?

1153
01:58:14,235 --> 01:58:15,318
I don't know.

1154
01:58:20,913 --> 01:58:23,513
In any event, H. looks the same.

1155
01:58:23,999 --> 01:58:25,957
And then he went on
about some tragedy

1156
01:58:25,999 --> 01:58:29,329
in which I presumably played
a role in the first two acts.

1157
01:58:31,529 --> 01:58:34,541
His tone depicted guilt,
but, in all honesty...

1158
01:58:35,704 --> 01:58:38,342
he has the eyes
of a wretched poodle.

1159
01:58:41,389 --> 01:58:43,342
Don't show this letter
to yours.

1160
01:58:44,208 --> 01:58:48,437
I am basically happy
for being right never to forget.

1161
01:59:00,930 --> 01:59:03,870
Forgiveness and revenge
belong to one another.

1162
01:59:04,664 --> 01:59:06,752
The forgiver
renounces revenge

1163
01:59:06,805 --> 01:59:08,631
because he, too,
could have been guilty.

1164
01:59:09,537 --> 01:59:11,791
The avenger doesn't
want to forgive

1165
01:59:11,832 --> 01:59:15,660
because he has an opportunity
to get back for what was done to him.

1166
01:59:17,343 --> 01:59:20,540
Reconciliation, however,
neither forgives nor accepts.

1167
01:59:20,594 --> 01:59:22,582
Rather, it judges.

1168
01:59:22,624 --> 01:59:26,248
When you take upon yourself,
as a member of human society,

1169
01:59:26,321 --> 01:59:28,665
the burden of what
the other did,

1170
01:59:28,800 --> 01:59:32,416
you don't accept the blame
or absolve him from the blame.

1171
01:59:32,687 --> 01:59:34,582
Rather, you take upon yourself

1172
01:59:34,749 --> 01:59:37,477
the injustice
that occurred in reality.

1173
01:59:38,251 --> 01:59:41,877
It's a decision to be a partner
to the accountability,

1174
01:59:42,421 --> 01:59:44,775
not at all a partner
to the guilt.

1175
01:59:47,777 --> 01:59:51,135
A, she helped create
the Heidegger myth.

1176
01:59:51,653 --> 01:59:57,615
The Heidegger myth
is that he engaged in politics until 1933,

1177
01:59:57,640 --> 02:00:00,166
realized that this is not
for him and then withdrew.

1178
02:00:00,206 --> 02:00:02,541
That to me is a myth,
and it's not true.

1179
02:00:02,768 --> 02:00:05,125
We know his active support
of the Nazis

1180
02:00:05,172 --> 02:00:07,917
for long after that, okay?

1181
02:00:08,937 --> 02:00:13,745
Where I'm critical of Hannah
is that after the reunion--

1182
02:00:13,785 --> 02:00:16,144
after she meets him, after--

1183
02:00:16,210 --> 02:00:19,740
that there really isn't
a kind of outspoken critique

1184
02:00:19,794 --> 02:00:21,795
of the role that he played,
you know.

1185
02:00:21,855 --> 02:00:23,969
So in this respect,
I think,

1186
02:00:23,994 --> 02:00:26,952
there was a kind of
blindness and deficiency.

1187
02:00:27,920 --> 02:00:29,837
[in Hebrew]

1188
02:00:58,082 --> 02:01:00,466
[narration: Arendt]
November 25, 1970.

1189
02:01:02,233 --> 02:01:05,340
Heinrich died suddenly
on October 31,

1190
02:01:06,198 --> 02:01:08,365
within seven and a half hours.

1191
02:01:10,286 --> 02:01:12,463
The mourners' gathering
was on the fourth.

1192
02:01:12,703 --> 02:01:15,662
His ashes were buried
on the 15th in Bard.

1193
02:01:18,059 --> 02:01:20,896
One man left
with what his alone--

1194
02:01:20,956 --> 02:01:24,541
with land and a horse,
patience and silence.

1195
02:01:24,855 --> 02:01:27,236
And then the heavens
and the eagles joined.

1196
02:01:31,983 --> 02:01:35,253
1971. Without Heinrich.

1197
02:01:36,747 --> 02:01:38,871
Free as a leaf in the wind.

1198
02:01:40,696 --> 02:01:43,767
[Kohn] The loneliness--
that shows at the end,

1199
02:01:43,820 --> 02:01:45,906
after her husband died,
especially.

1200
02:01:45,965 --> 02:01:48,588
She looked 160.

1201
02:01:48,668 --> 02:01:53,353
She has become like a prophet
out of the Hebrew Bible.

1202
02:01:55,012 --> 02:01:58,411
And that face in those
last photographs is just--

1203
02:02:01,217 --> 02:02:04,332
The life she led,
the life--

1204
02:02:04,372 --> 02:02:06,189
I think it all showed
in her face.

1205
02:02:06,249 --> 02:02:11,379
She was an exile,
an émigré from Germany,

1206
02:02:11,419 --> 02:02:12,860
then from France

1207
02:02:12,887 --> 02:02:14,714
and then in
the United States

1208
02:02:14,740 --> 02:02:17,726
where she found
she belonged.

1209
02:02:17,780 --> 02:02:19,894
Then she wrote
the Eichmann book,

1210
02:02:19,925 --> 02:02:22,482
and then she was,
so to speak,

1211
02:02:22,516 --> 02:02:25,953
excommunicated from
the Jewish communities

1212
02:02:25,978 --> 02:02:28,550
in America, in Europe,
in Israel.

1213
02:02:30,676 --> 02:02:33,548
And then the men
in her life.

1214
02:02:33,588 --> 02:02:36,581
The men in her life
also betrayed her,

1215
02:02:36,607 --> 02:02:40,300
including her deeply,
deeply loved husband.

1216
02:02:41,180 --> 02:02:45,331
I think that part of the reason
that she has enjoyed such--

1217
02:02:45,591 --> 02:02:48,133
never mind the criticism--
but such renown

1218
02:02:48,180 --> 02:02:51,325
is precisely because she was
an independent thinker,

1219
02:02:51,358 --> 02:02:53,869
that she doesn't fit
any traditional categories.

1220
02:02:53,915 --> 02:02:57,139
She's not a classical liberal.
She's not a classist Marxist.

1221
02:02:57,179 --> 02:02:59,083
She's not a classic
conservative.

1222
02:02:59,123 --> 02:03:01,147
You know, she's always
transforming.

1223
02:03:01,200 --> 02:03:03,308
And here's a person
thinking about the most

1224
02:03:03,362 --> 02:03:04,583
important of the issues

1225
02:03:04,626 --> 02:03:08,362
without using these standard
categories, you know.

1226
02:03:09,302 --> 02:03:12,624
Oh, I think there's
an exilic perspective

1227
02:03:13,121 --> 02:03:15,406
that is Jewish and not Jewish.

1228
02:03:15,431 --> 02:03:17,013
It's Jewish for sure

1229
02:03:17,046 --> 02:03:18,360
'cause she's a Jewish exile.

1230
02:03:18,386 --> 02:03:21,045
But it gives her
a certain kind of--

1231
02:03:21,445 --> 02:03:24,259
[sharp exhale]
... commitment.

1232
02:03:24,284 --> 02:03:26,508
It's the basis
of a commitment...

1233
02:03:27,855 --> 02:03:29,370
for all refugees.

1234
02:03:29,423 --> 02:03:31,387
In other words,
she universalizes

1235
02:03:31,440 --> 02:03:33,610
from the position
of Jewish exile.

1236
02:03:35,110 --> 02:03:38,542
And the universalization
of that perspective leads to,

1237
02:03:38,590 --> 02:03:42,241
I think, an extremely
important prioritization

1238
02:03:42,290 --> 02:03:43,892
of the right of the refugee.

1239
02:03:49,691 --> 02:03:52,357
[narration: Arendt]
Difficult as it is to conceive evil,

1240
02:03:52,419 --> 02:03:55,172
even in the face
of its factual existence,

1241
02:03:55,505 --> 02:03:59,060
it seems to be closely connected
with the invention of a system

1242
02:03:59,113 --> 02:04:02,371
in which all men
are equally superfluous.

1243
02:04:08,806 --> 02:04:10,774
The dangers
of the corpse factories

1244
02:04:10,815 --> 02:04:12,585
and holes of oblivion

1245
02:04:12,610 --> 02:04:14,805
is that today,
masses of people

1246
02:04:14,857 --> 02:04:17,262
are continually
rendered superfluous

1247
02:04:17,300 --> 02:04:21,050
when we continue to think of our world
in utilitarian terms

1248
02:04:21,097 --> 02:04:24,548
rather than in terms
of a common world shared by all.

1249
02:04:25,548 --> 02:04:29,362
Political, social and economic
events in modern times

1250
02:04:29,387 --> 02:04:33,346
are in a silent conspiracy
with totalitarian instruments

1251
02:04:33,423 --> 02:04:35,989
devised to make man superfluous.

1252
02:04:40,024 --> 02:04:42,565
Totalitarian solutions
may well survive

1253
02:04:42,607 --> 02:04:45,066
the fall of totalitarian regimes

1254
02:04:45,107 --> 02:04:47,419
in the form
of a strong temptation

1255
02:04:47,815 --> 02:04:50,090
which will come up
whenever it seems impossible

1256
02:04:50,116 --> 02:04:53,652
to alleviate political,
social or economic misery

1257
02:04:54,300 --> 02:04:56,638
in a manner worthy of man.

1258
02:04:57,305 --> 02:05:57,259