Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Concerning the deportation from Western Europe, “two incidents, in particular, attracted the attention of the Jerusalem court” (163): a train from Bordeaux that Eichmann cancels due to lack of cargo, and 4,000 children who have been separated from their parents, for whom it takes Eichmann ten days to decide to go ahead and transport them. In 1942, having deported 27,000 Jews from France to Auschwitz, and with 70,000 “stateless” Jews still in France, “Germans made their first mistake” (164). They request the deportation of French Jews in addition to “stateless” Jews, and the French refuse. In Belgium, not many Belgian Jews are deported, but 15,000 naturalized and stateless Jews are sent to Auschwitz. Holland, without a government of its own, is “utterly at the mercy of the Germans” (167). In Holland, there exists a strong feeling of anti-Semitism and a willingness by Dutch Jews to establish a line between themselves and the stateless Jews. By 1944, 113,000 Jews, including Dutch Jews, have been deported. Norway houses about 1,700 stateless Jews, all of whom are deported to camps in 1942. After these measures are taken, Sweden surprises everyone and “offered asylum […] to all who were persecuted” (171). Denmark is “unique among all the countries in Europe,” refusing to issue the yellow badges, thus making it impossible to distinguish the Danish Jews from the stateless Jews (171):

The Danes […] explained to the German officials that because the stateless refugees were no longer German citizens, the Nazis could not claim them without Danish assent. This was one of the few cases in which statelessness turned out to be an asset (172).

Without being able to proceed with their preparations, Germans postpone deportation operations in Denmark until the fall of 1943. At that time, Sweden cancels its 1940 contract with Germany, meaning Germans cannot pass through to get to Denmark; the Danes riot and refuse to repair German boats in their harbors, and the S.S. units deployed in Denmark to manage the chaos refuse to follow orders. Reich plenipotentiary, Dr. Werner Best, travels to Berlin to insure “that all Jews from Denmark would be sent to Theresienstadt” (173), but on the night assigned for their seizure, German police units are only able to recover 477 people out of more than 7,800. Best most likely tips off the Jews to gives them enough time to hide. The Danes then ferry the Jews across the water to Sweden, where they are granted asylum and permission to work. Italy does not readily adopt or support anti-Jewish measures, and when Mussolini introduces such legislation in the late thirties, he adds an exemption to the usual ones: that any Jew who used to be a member of the Fascist Party will be exempt from deportation. No actual numbers exist for people that this stipulation might have saved, but it would have been quite high, since many Jews had flocked to the Fascist Party over the previous two decades in order to serve in any civil service positions. The Germans agree that Italian Jews should not be deported but rather concentrated in Italian camps. The Germans go back on their word, however, and eventually ship approximately 7,500 Jews from Italy to Auschwitz. 

Unique to the deportations from the Balkans is the issue of clearly-defined borders: “[B]ecause the populations in these regions fluctuated, there existed no natural or historical boundaries, and those that had been established […] were quite arbitrary” (182). To gain these countries’ partnerships, the Axis offers them more territory. The Jews are denied nationality and thus become stateless, rendering them to the same fate as those Jews of Western Europe. The Jews of the Balkans become “invariably the first to be deported and liquidated” (182). The Croatians deport their Jews themselves, paying the Germans thirty marks for each in exchange for the property of the deportees. In Serbia, no Jews are deported. Male Jews are shot, and Jewish women and children are killed in gas vans, organized by the commander of the Security Police, Dr. Emanuel Schäfer: “For the gassing of 6,280 women and children, [Schäfer] was sentenced to six years and six months in prison” (185). Bulgaria agrees to the deportation of 15,000 Jews but perhaps does not understand what “resettlement in the East” truly means (185). Once they do understand, “both Parliament and the population remained clearly on the side of the Jews” (187). As in Denmark, German officials in Bulgaria become unreliable as to whether or not they can be counted upon to follow orders. Not a “single Bulgarian Jew” is deported. In Greece, whose population is “indifferent at best,” 55,000 Jews are concentrated then deported to Auschwitz. Deportations and camps established in Romania “were more elaborate and more atrocious than anything we know of in Germany” (192). Romania kills about 300,000 of their Jews, but when Germany states they will assist in the deportation of another 200,000 Romanian Jews, Romania refuses. The country found a lucrative side business in exemption sales and refuses to let Germany intervene, later surrendering to the Red Army in 1944.

In March of 1944, Eichmann and about ten men travel to Budapest to see to the evacuation of 800,000 Jews. They encourage the Jewish leaders there to form a council through which they will give their orders, but it proves difficult since by this time, most people know what the evacuations mean. Regardless, the council organizes within two weeks. The operation halts when “Sweden once more led the way with regard to practical measures, by distributing entry permits, and Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal followed her example” (200).

By the end of these efforts, thirty-three thousand Jews are living in Budapest under the protection of the neutral countries. After evacuations are ordered to cease, Eichmann deports another 1,500 Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz: “Of an original Jewish population of eight hundred thousand, some [one] hundred and sixty thousand must still have remained in the Budapest ghetto […] and of these tens of thousands became victims of spontaneous pogroms” (202). Ninety thousand Jews live in “deeply Catholic” Slovakia, a country that agrees to expelling the Jews and inheriting their property, but not to their extermination, though “they did not mind occasional killing” (202-03). The Slovaks attempt to handle the Jews according to their own measures, including transferring some of the wealthier Jewish holdings to non-Jews and organizing Jews for hard labor. Then, in 1942, Eichmann and Heydrich persuade Slovakia to resettle all Jews in the East, resulting in the deportation of 52,000 Jews to “the killing centers in Poland” (204).