Eichmann in Jerusalem

by

Hannah Arendt

Robert Servatius Character Analysis

Eichmann’s often incompetent and insensitive attorney, who had previously defended Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. His motives for taking Eichmann’s case are mysterious—he was underpaid and knew he would face an uphill battle, given the prosecution’s relative abundance of resources and manpower—and, in addition to blaming Jews for their own persecution and calling mass murder a mere “medical matter,” he tended to miss obvious opportunities to challenge the legitimacy or validity of testimony by the prosecution’s witnesses. His case rested primarily on his claim that the Jerusalem court could not legitimately try Eichmann because it lacked jurisdiction over him, his crimes were “acts of state,” and judge Moshe Landau and his colleagues, as Jews, were supposedly incapable of impartially rendering judgment about the Holocaust.

Robert Servatius Quotes in Eichmann in Jerusalem

The Eichmann in Jerusalem quotes below are all either spoken by Robert Servatius or refer to Robert Servatius. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Banality of Evil Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

Alas, nobody believed him. The prosecutor did not believe him, because that was not his job. Counsel for the defense paid no attention because he, unlike Eichmann, was, to all appearances, not interested in questions of conscience. And the judges did not believe him, because they were too good, and perhaps also too conscious of the very foundations of their profession, to admit that an average, “normal” person, neither feeble-minded nor indoctrinated nor cynical, could be perfectly incapable of telling right from wrong. They preferred to conclude from occasional lies that he was a liar—and missed the greatest moral and even legal challenge of the whole case. Their case rested on the assumption that the defendant, like all “normal persons,” must have been aware of the criminal nature of his acts, and Eichmann was indeed normal insofar as he was “no exception within the Nazi regime.” However, under the conditions of the Third Reich only “exceptions” could be expected to react “normally.” This simple truth of the matter created a dilemma for the judges which they could neither resolve nor escape.

Related Characters: Adolf Eichmann, Moshe Landau, Gideon Hausner, Robert Servatius
Page Number: 26-7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

It quickly turned out that Israel was the only country in the world where defense witnesses could not be heard, and where certain witnesses for the prosecution, those who had given affidavits in previous trials, could not be cross-examined by the defense. And this was all the more serious as the accused and his lawyer were indeed not “in a position to obtain their own defense documents.”

Related Characters: Adolf Eichmann, Gideon Hausner, Robert Servatius
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
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Robert Servatius Quotes in Eichmann in Jerusalem

The Eichmann in Jerusalem quotes below are all either spoken by Robert Servatius or refer to Robert Servatius. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Banality of Evil Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

Alas, nobody believed him. The prosecutor did not believe him, because that was not his job. Counsel for the defense paid no attention because he, unlike Eichmann, was, to all appearances, not interested in questions of conscience. And the judges did not believe him, because they were too good, and perhaps also too conscious of the very foundations of their profession, to admit that an average, “normal” person, neither feeble-minded nor indoctrinated nor cynical, could be perfectly incapable of telling right from wrong. They preferred to conclude from occasional lies that he was a liar—and missed the greatest moral and even legal challenge of the whole case. Their case rested on the assumption that the defendant, like all “normal persons,” must have been aware of the criminal nature of his acts, and Eichmann was indeed normal insofar as he was “no exception within the Nazi regime.” However, under the conditions of the Third Reich only “exceptions” could be expected to react “normally.” This simple truth of the matter created a dilemma for the judges which they could neither resolve nor escape.

Related Characters: Adolf Eichmann, Moshe Landau, Gideon Hausner, Robert Servatius
Page Number: 26-7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

It quickly turned out that Israel was the only country in the world where defense witnesses could not be heard, and where certain witnesses for the prosecution, those who had given affidavits in previous trials, could not be cross-examined by the defense. And this was all the more serious as the accused and his lawyer were indeed not “in a position to obtain their own defense documents.”

Related Characters: Adolf Eichmann, Gideon Hausner, Robert Servatius
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis: