Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt

1 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:12,074 2 00:02:32,835 --> 00:02:35,755 [narration: man] Heidelberg. October 28, 1945. 3 00:02:36,920 --> 00:02:40,691 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 00:02:47,853 --> 00:02:51,479 It seems to me that you have completely maintained your inner core, 7 00:02:52,085 --> 00:02:54,443 whether you have been in Königsberg, Heidelberg, 8 00:02:54,476 --> 00:02:55,803 Paris or America. 9 00:02:56,554 --> 00:03:00,736 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 00:03:11,254 --> 00:03:13,671 [chorus: song of mourning] 13 00:03:20,752 --> 00:03:22,721 [narration: woman] New York, 1945. 14 00:03:23,227 --> 00:03:25,931 Dear, dear Karl Jaspers, my teacher. 15 00:03:26,876 --> 00:03:28,744 Ever since I've known that you both came through 16 00:03:28,770 --> 00:03:30,839 the whole hellish mess unharmed, 17 00:03:30,918 --> 00:03:34,196 I've felt somewhat more at home in the world again. 18 00:03:35,835 --> 00:03:38,918 I don't need to tell you that I worried about you all those years. 19 00:03:40,544 --> 00:03:42,752 My happiness in feeling a bond with you 20 00:03:42,793 --> 00:03:46,582 is mixed up with a child like desire not to disappoint you. 21 00:03:47,785 --> 00:03:51,397 You are quite simply the greatest educator of all time. 22 00:03:52,139 --> 00:03:54,263 Don't laugh. It's true. 23 00:03:54,793 --> 00:03:57,202 And only because you are a philosopher. 24 00:04:06,460 --> 00:04:09,335 I've been turning your manuscript "Guilt Question" 25 00:04:09,377 --> 00:04:11,971 over and over again in my mind. 26 00:04:12,460 --> 00:04:15,752 Your definition of Nazi policy as a crime 27 00:04:15,947 --> 00:04:18,249 strikes me as questionable. 28 00:04:19,210 --> 00:04:21,127 The Nazi crimes, it seems to me, 29 00:04:21,168 --> 00:04:23,127 explode the limits of the law, 30 00:04:23,168 --> 00:04:26,808 and that is precisely what constitutes their monstrousness. 31 00:04:31,252 --> 00:04:34,918 We're simply not equipped to deal on a human and political level 32 00:04:34,960 --> 00:04:37,585 with a guilt that is beyond crime 33 00:04:37,940 --> 00:04:41,200 and an innocence that is beyond goodness or virtue. 34 00:04:45,853 --> 00:04:47,266 [narration: Jaspers] Dear Hannah Arendt, 35 00:04:48,042 --> 00:04:50,690 I'm not altogether comfortable with your view, 36 00:04:51,117 --> 00:04:53,876 because a guilt that goes beyond all criminal guilt 37 00:04:53,918 --> 00:04:56,820 inevitably takes on a streak of greatness, 38 00:04:56,867 --> 00:04:58,699 of satanic greatness. 39 00:04:59,419 --> 00:05:03,043 This, for me, is as inappropriate for the Nazis 40 00:05:03,085 --> 00:05:06,539 as all the talks about the demonic element in Hitler. 41 00:05:07,845 --> 00:05:12,419 It seems to me that we have to see these things in their total banality, 42 00:05:12,531 --> 00:05:14,474 in their prosaic triviality, 43 00:05:15,042 --> 00:05:17,558 because that's what truly characterizes them. 44 00:05:19,167 --> 00:05:22,336 Bacteria can cause epidemics that wipe out nations, 45 00:05:22,837 --> 00:05:24,750 but it remains merely bacteria. 46 00:05:29,632 --> 00:05:31,724 [narration: Arendt] My beloved, adored teacher, 47 00:05:32,432 --> 00:05:35,644 I realize completely that in the way I have expressed this up to now, 48 00:05:35,671 --> 00:05:38,880 I come dangerously close to that satanic greatness 49 00:05:38,905 --> 00:05:41,371 that I, like you, totally reject. 50 00:05:42,524 --> 00:05:46,335 Perhaps what is behind it all is not only that individual human beings 51 00:05:46,377 --> 00:05:48,866 kill other individual human beings, 52 00:05:49,159 --> 00:05:52,002 but that an organized attempt was made to eradicate 53 00:05:52,043 --> 00:05:54,425 the concept of the human being. 54 00:06:15,819 --> 00:06:16,944 [rifles cocking] 55 00:06:17,132 --> 00:06:18,529 [gunshots] 56 00:06:23,227 --> 00:06:29,256 I think that the most profound experience in Arendt's life 57 00:06:29,336 --> 00:06:32,907 was reading the horrors of what happened in the Holocaust. 58 00:06:33,585 --> 00:06:38,933 And I think that it is that reflection of the horrors of the Holocaust 59 00:06:38,987 --> 00:06:42,277 that is a key to a deeper understanding 60 00:06:42,302 --> 00:06:44,293 of everything she wrote after that. 61 00:06:44,557 --> 00:06:47,676 You know, including On Revolution, 62 00:06:47,716 --> 00:06:49,191 The Human Condition, 63 00:06:49,224 --> 00:06:52,056 Between Past and Future, The Life of the Mind. 64 00:06:52,930 --> 00:06:56,839 When people talk, "Oh, she-- Her love of the world," and so forth, 65 00:06:56,886 --> 00:06:58,681 it's a very real thing. 66 00:06:58,708 --> 00:07:00,629 But for the difference in the world, 67 00:07:00,663 --> 00:07:02,578 the difference is the plurality. 68 00:07:02,604 --> 00:07:06,756 That's another very basic concept of Arendt's-- 69 00:07:06,781 --> 00:07:09,838 is the plurality, the difference, the diversity. 70 00:07:09,872 --> 00:07:11,473 She thought, actually, 71 00:07:11,520 --> 00:07:14,507 that every single individual was unique, 72 00:07:14,532 --> 00:07:17,667 every person in the world was unique. 73 00:07:17,692 --> 00:07:19,209 But more-- more-- [chuckles] 74 00:07:19,242 --> 00:07:21,459 I don't know if she was right. I think she was unique. 75 00:07:21,486 --> 00:07:23,327 I'm not so sure about everybody. 76 00:07:23,398 --> 00:07:25,315 [in Hebrew] 77 00:08:06,081 --> 00:08:07,998 [horns honking] 78 00:08:15,430 --> 00:08:17,347 [chattering] 79 00:08:40,190 --> 00:08:42,438 [film score plays: dramatic] 80 00:08:51,309 --> 00:08:53,643 [film narrator, in Hebrew] 81 00:09:15,858 --> 00:09:17,518 [narration: Arendt] March 1961. 82 00:09:18,457 --> 00:09:20,304 My beloved, adored teacher. 83 00:09:21,816 --> 00:09:26,399 The Eichmann trial, against which you voiced your reservations at the outset, 84 00:09:26,441 --> 00:09:29,983 has now happily, or unhappily, thrown our plans out the window. 85 00:09:33,117 --> 00:09:36,316 But, my dear and honored friend, I would never forgive myself 86 00:09:36,358 --> 00:09:40,600 if I didn't go and see with my own eyes this real-life disaster 87 00:09:40,625 --> 00:09:43,863 unfolding with all its uncanny vacuousness. 88 00:09:45,298 --> 00:09:47,232 Don't forget how early I left Germany 89 00:09:47,274 --> 00:09:50,353 and how little of this I really experienced directly. 90 00:09:57,232 --> 00:10:00,556 Many years ago, I described the totalitarian system. 91 00:10:01,450 --> 00:10:05,000 It was always the system, rather than the individuals, that I was referring to. 92 00:10:05,900 --> 00:10:08,108 And if you look at the system as a whole, 93 00:10:08,149 --> 00:10:11,858 every individual person, indeed, becomes a cog-- 94 00:10:11,900 --> 00:10:14,345 small or big-- in the machine of terror. 95 00:10:16,733 --> 00:10:19,153 Now I wanted to know who Eichmann is 96 00:10:19,178 --> 00:10:23,376 insofar as he was a free agent who had the freedom of choice. 97 00:10:23,733 --> 00:10:27,428 And for this reason, the whole "small cog" theory is irrelevant. 98 00:10:28,811 --> 00:10:32,591 This probably was my most powerful motive to go to Jerusalem. 99 00:10:36,167 --> 00:10:38,708 [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 00:11:10,561 --> 00:11:11,853 [narration: Arendt] Clearly, this courtroom 103 00:11:11,886 --> 00:11:13,691 is not a bad place for the show trial 104 00:11:13,733 --> 00:11:17,358 that David Ben-Gurion, prime minister of Israel, had in mind. 105 00:11:18,459 --> 00:11:20,626 Not once has he attended a session. 106 00:11:21,441 --> 00:11:24,637 In the courtroom, he speaks with the voice of Gideon Hausner, 107 00:11:24,662 --> 00:11:25,954 the attorney general. 108 00:11:28,510 --> 00:11:31,010 [Hausner, in Hebrew] 109 00:11:59,045 --> 00:12:01,398 [narration: Arendt] It was bad history and cheap rhetoric. 110 00:12:02,625 --> 00:12:06,076 It was not an individual on the stand at that historic trial, 111 00:12:06,101 --> 00:12:08,563 and not even the Nazi regime itself, 112 00:12:08,646 --> 00:12:11,502 but anti-Semitism throughout history. 113 00:12:13,232 --> 00:12:17,399 Even worse, it suggested that perhaps Eichmann was only an innocent executor 114 00:12:17,441 --> 00:12:20,295 of some mysteriously predetermined destiny, 115 00:12:20,710 --> 00:12:23,513 or, for that matter, even anti-Semitism itself. 116 00:12:24,455 --> 00:12:27,622 [in Hebrew] 117 00:12:52,919 --> 00:12:55,378 [crows squawking] 118 00:13:07,433 --> 00:13:09,142 [narration: Arendt] In the eyes of the Jews, 119 00:13:09,184 --> 00:13:11,934 the catastrophe that had befallen them under Hitler-- 120 00:13:11,975 --> 00:13:14,475 in which a third of their people perished-- 121 00:13:14,517 --> 00:13:17,920 appeared not as the most unprecedented crime of genocide, 122 00:13:18,391 --> 00:13:21,057 but as the oldest crime they knew and remembered. 123 00:13:22,201 --> 00:13:24,129 None of the participants at the trial 124 00:13:24,156 --> 00:13:26,767 ever arrived at a clear understanding 125 00:13:26,808 --> 00:13:29,086 of the actual horrors of Auschwitz, 126 00:13:29,934 --> 00:13:33,350 because it appeared to the prosecution and judges alike 127 00:13:33,546 --> 00:13:37,975 as not much more than the most horrible pogrom in Jewish history. 128 00:13:39,998 --> 00:13:44,226 What they missed is that the supreme crime that they were confronted with 129 00:13:44,267 --> 00:13:46,391 was a crime against humanity, 130 00:13:46,433 --> 00:13:49,666 perpetrated upon the body of the Jewish people, 131 00:13:50,126 --> 00:13:53,391 and that only the choice of victims, not the nature of the crime, 132 00:13:53,433 --> 00:13:56,893 could be derived from the long history of anti-Semitism. 133 00:13:59,059 --> 00:14:03,350 Genocide is an attack upon human diversity as such, 134 00:14:03,391 --> 00:14:07,121 without which the very words "mankind" or "humanity" 135 00:14:07,146 --> 00:14:08,979 would be devoid of meaning. 136 00:14:13,426 --> 00:14:15,510 [interviewer, in German] 137 00:14:33,734 --> 00:14:36,150 [in German] 138 00:14:47,241 --> 00:14:49,600 [murmuring] 139 00:16:09,939 --> 00:16:13,836 [on tape, in German] 140 00:16:28,452 --> 00:16:30,718 [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. 143 00:16:38,617 --> 00:16:41,033 We do it by reaching another dimension 144 00:16:41,313 --> 00:16:44,011 which lies beyond the horizon of everyday life. 145 00:16:45,205 --> 00:16:47,818 In other words, the more superficial someone is, 146 00:16:47,993 --> 00:16:50,909 the more likely he will be to yield to evil. 147 00:16:50,992 --> 00:16:53,476 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. 149 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 00:17:54,847 --> 00:17:57,275 [in Hebrew] 152 00:18:31,623 --> 00:18:32,971 People went berserk. 153 00:18:34,478 --> 00:18:37,792 The language that was used to attack her, 154 00:18:37,858 --> 00:18:40,118 what people said when they got up-- 155 00:18:40,300 --> 00:18:44,452 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 00:18:50,505 --> 00:18:53,481 a moral equivalent of the murderers... 159 00:18:54,617 --> 00:19:00,285 besmirching the innocence of the death of all the victims. 160 00:19:00,605 --> 00:19:02,701 I mean, completely outrageous. 161 00:19:02,776 --> 00:19:06,779 The American Jewish community made up their mind 162 00:19:06,826 --> 00:19:09,563 that she's exonerating Eichmann, 163 00:19:09,609 --> 00:19:13,760 she's a self-hating Jew-- Jew. 164 00:19:13,785 --> 00:19:15,938 She is an anti-Zionist. 165 00:19:15,963 --> 00:19:19,108 And used every tactic to type and discredit her. 166 00:19:19,142 --> 00:19:20,576 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 00:19:26,384 --> 00:19:28,550 I'd give a lecture on Eichmann in Jerusalem, 170 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. 172 00:19:31,687 --> 00:19:35,251 How could I defend this vicious anti-Semite? 173 00:19:56,073 --> 00:19:58,201 [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