Eichmann in Jerusalem: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

The Nazi value of “ruthless toughness” lives on in postwar Germany, which equates it with “lacking goodness” and seems to forget its dimension of pure evil. This was a main criterion by which Eichmann’s office chose officials to oversee deportations in other countries around Europe.

France was Himmler’s top priority, and 100,000 foreign Jews were expeditiously deported from both the Occupied Zone and Vichy France, with enthusiastic cooperation from the French government and police. There were not enough foreign Jews in Bordeaux to fill a train Eichmann sent, and Eichmann later coordinated the deportation of 4,000 children to concentration camps after their parents had already been sent there, but the court exaggerates Eichmann’s power over both decisions. With 70,000 stateless Jews remaining in France and news of the previous deportees’ fate finally reaching the country, the Germans requested permission to deport French Jews as well. The French government immediately stopped cooperating and did whatever possible to complicate the deportation proceedings; the Nazis quickly had to give up on their plans, and at the end of the war, more than half of France’s Jews—250,000—had survived.

In response to the unexpectedly low deportation rate from France, the Nazis insisted on deporting more Jews from Belgium and Holland than originally planned. Belgium was controlled by the German military, but the Belgian police refused to cooperate, and Belgian rail workers helped Jews escape the deportation trains. At the start of the war, 80,000 of Belgium’s 90,000 Jews were refugees, and about half of them fled again in the war’s first year, including most of the Jewish Councils’ leaders. Many foreign Jews were “easily recognizable and most difficult to hide,” and accordingly about 25,000 were deported and killed.

Like elsewhere, in Holland stateless Jews (almost all German refugees) were deported first; they were 35,000 of the total 140,000. Ruled by a German civil government and with its own cabinet and royal family exiled in London, Holland “was utterly at the mercy of the Germans,” whom the prosecution falsely claims were all following Eichmann’s orders. In fact, Himmler mostly gave the S.S. and Police priority in Holland, to Eichmann’s chagrin, since they seemed most able to quash the Dutch population’s extensive protests, strikes, and journalistic backlash to the Nazis. Nevertheless, the formidable Dutch Nazi movement and Dutch Jews’ insistence on distinguishing themselves from foreigners created “a catastrophe unparalleled in any Western country.” Between 20-25,000 Jews went into hiding, but about half were found through informers, and by the end of the war ¾ of Holland’s Jews, mostly native-born, had died.

Scandinavia posed significant trouble for the Nazis. They never occupied Sweden, and Hitler so respected Finland that he did not even try to deport its Jews. Denmark retained its independent government and had no significant Nazi movement. But Norway did have enthusiastic fascists, and most of its 1,700 Jews were rapidly interned in the Fall of 1942. Yet many Norwegian officials immediately resigned, and Sweden offered Norwegian Jews asylum and sometimes nationality; about 900 were smuggled across the border.

Denmark “was unique among all the countries of Europe,” Arendt says, an extraordinary and instructive case “for all students who wish to learn something about the enormous power potential inherent in non-violent action and in resistance.” More than anywhere else, Danes openly refused to even consider Nazi anti-Jewish policies, and government officials immediately threatened resignation. Denmark even insistently protected stateless Jews, and when the Nazis tried to begin deportations in 1943, Danish shipyard workers went on strike and even German government and S.S. officials refused to carry out their orders.

When the Nazis tried to seize Jews for deportation to Theresienstadt that October, they were prevented from breaking into apartments (lest the Danish police fight back) and only ultimately found 477 of the more than 7,800 Jews living in Denmark. Danish officials and Jewish communities publically announced the Nazis’ intentions and “all sections of the Danish people” were willing to help Jews hide out. Wealthy Danes paid for Jews to be transported to Sweden—almost 6,000 went—and the few hundred Jews who went to Theresienstadt, mostly elderly or poor, were given special privileges. Only 48 of them died.

The resistance of German officials in Denmark, Arendt argues, was particularly extraordinary: when confronted with the native population’s resistance, they gave up their “toughness” and Nazi ideology.

Although “Italy was Germany’s only real ally in Europe,” by the time of the war Hitler and Mussolini no longer saw eye-to-eye. Italy sabotaged the Final Solution, not only by offering Jews a sort of de facto asylum in Italian-occupied areas, but also by convincing other European Fascist countries that they need not collaborate with the Nazis. Mussolini would publicly agree to carry out deportations, but his generals seldom did so.

At one point, German pressure did convince Italy to round up 22,000 Jews in the Italian-occupied region of southern France, but by the time Eichmann’s officials arrived there, “the French police had destroyed all the lists of the registered Jews.” Later, the Italians insisted that thousands of Jews were hiding out in tiny Monaco—and by the time the Germans were done with their research, they were no longer there. There was also “an element of farce” in Mussolini’s willingness to impose nominal anti-Jewish laws but exempt all former Fascist Party members and their families, certainly including “the great majority of Italian Jews.” Even the main Italian anti-Semitic organization openly employed Jews.

Italian Jews were already remarkably assimilated and ultimately saved by “the almost automatic general humanity of an old and civilized people.” Even after the Germans sent a ruthless administrator and the German police to take over, the Italians helped most of Rome’s Jews escape and insisted that the rest of its Jews would stay in Italian territory; 7,500 ended up in camps only because Germany broke its promises. But more than 90% of Italy’s Jews survived unscathed.