Garima’s Reviews > Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil > Status Update

In Germany today, the notion of ‘prominent’ Jews has not yet been forgotten. The fate of ‘famous’ Jews is still deplored at the expense of all others. There are more than a few people, especially among the cultural elite, who still publicly regret the fact that Germany sent Einstein packing without realizing that it was a much greater crime to kill little Hans Cohn from around the corner even though he was no genius.

Is this a textbook case of bad faith, of lying self-deception combined with outrageous stupidity? Or is it simply the case of the eternally unrepentant criminal (Dostoevski once mentions in his diaries that in Siberia, among scores of murderers, rapists, and burglars, he never met a single man who would admit that he had done wrong) who cannot afford to face reality because his crime has become part and parcel of it?