In this picture, Adolf Eichman looks remarkably like my father.

NNadir

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Sun May-14-06 10:36 AM
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In this picture, Adolf Eichman looks remarkably like my father.

I have been struck by this before. On trial for genocide in Jerusalem, wearing heavy framed glasses, balding, the slightly hooked nose, the ears a little protuberant, the weak chin, Eichmann has a striking resemblance to my own father.

It is possible that there is some relation. My great grandfather, my father's grandfather, came to the US from Austria towards the end of the 19th century. I even think he may have come from Linz.

My father was a fine, generous and kind human being. Much of what I am trying to be as a father myself is tied up in trying to live up to what he was. But still, it is a strange thought, that Eichmann could be family.

Gasp!

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skygazer

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Sun May-14-06 10:53 AM
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1. To me, that's the most frightening thing about evil

I don't believe in pure evil any more than I believe in pure good. As far as I'm concerned, to label someone pure evil gives them a sort of an out for their behavior - "what do you expect? He's pure evil. How do you think he's going to act."

To think that there is a CHOICE - that's the terrifying thing. That people CHOOSE to be evil. And to realize that these people we label as pure evil had to have family members who were perfectly ordinary good citizens makes you realize how fine a line there really is.

Creepy indeed.

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NNadir

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Sun May-14-06 11:08 AM
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3. Sometimes I think people back into becoming evil.

It's that "slippery slope" thing.

I think all of us are engaged in this sort of thing.

What the United States is doing today is reprehensible. Like many Germans of that era, we pretend that we don't know about it, but on some level we do know.

Eichmann, of course, whether I share ancestors with him or not, was on a whole other level. If he had a shred of ethics, and clearly he didn't, he would have killed himself rather than do what he did.

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Spider Jerusalem

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Sun May-14-06 11:07 AM
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2. Yes, I can see how strange that would be...

I'm sure you can imagine how I felt when I discovered that I'm related to the Confederate general who was in charge of the Andersonville prison camp. One WANTS to think of people who commit such heinous acts as being somehow separate from the rest of humanity, because that makes their evil somewhat easier to deal with; but the truth is that evil is banal and commonplace, and the camp wardens and executioners were mostly ordinary men who were somehow capable of terrible acts.

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LouisianaLiberal

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Sun May-14-06 11:22 AM
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4. "Eichmann in Jerusalem" by Hannah Arendt

A very timely book. Arendt tried to show how dispassionate classification of people corrupts those who do not have a Kantian kind of moral compass. Eichmann appeared normal, but he unconsciously discarded his responsibility because he didn't use reason to address the horror he perpetrated.

I think Colbert may have read Arendt.

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rug

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Sun May-14-06 01:49 PM
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5. The Banality of Evil.

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