98 pages • 3 hours read
The Nazi Hunters
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Themes
Justice for Victims of the Holocaust
Throughout the book, a number of motivations are raised for the hunt and capture of Adolf Eichmann. For Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, capturing Eichmann is a matter of restoring justiceand establishing memory. Many of the figures in the book note with the creation of the Israeli state and the passage of time, the memory of the Holocaust has begun to fade. Though a large portion of Israeli citizens are in fact survivors of the Holocaust, the book's protagonists observe a push to "move on," to leave the past where it is.
To do so, however, would be to abandon the obligation to restore justice. To capture Eichmann unearths these horrible memories, which is seen as vital. Otherwise, as these memories and accounts fade, so does the chance to fulfill the obligation to bring criminals to justice. It is difficult to argue that Eichmann is the same magnitude of threat as he was before. While he remains a hero to the Nazi community, he will never retain the power and influence he had during the war. However, the motivations to locate, capture, and prosecute Eichmann speak less to this ideathan its underpinnings—that the Holocaust was not a crime that warrants punishment, but merely an unfortunate consequence of the war, whose magnitude has been sensationalized.
Again, the irony of Nazism, exemplified by someone like Eichmann, was that its evil was perpetrated by an ethos of denialism and deferred responsibility—this was the "banality of evil" Hannah Arendt would later document and theorize upon in her text Eichmann in Jerusalem. Restoring history, then, was the only way to combat this evil and confront these menwith the magnitude of what they had done, as well as their own efforts to deny it, and erase their crimes.
The distinction made by the ministers and architects of Eichmann's trial argues that justice is more than retribution or punishment; rather it is the insistence upon the reality of a crime, and its moral weight. This has specific relevance to the book's accounts of how the Holocaust was carried out. The consistent use of deception and equivocation, the confusion and ambiguity, even in the midst of the war, suggested a strategy which was fully conscious of the evil of the crime, to the extent where it could not be meaningfully justified or defended, while simultaneously still denied outright. To reiterate, what the investigations into Eichmann's life—and indeed, his own testimony—reveal is that this underlying deception was as integral to the "Final Solution," as was mass murder. Eichmann personifies the effectiveness of this strategy of moral evasion.
With this in mind, the theme of memory has important connections to that of justice, by tying the exposure of evil acts to their commission. Though the victims retained the scars and marks of their ordeal, the Holocaust was as much meant to destroy the memory of the Jewish people in Europe as it was their bodies and identities. The fear of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and others was that even though the Third Reich had been defeated, and millions had survived the Holocaust, some irreparable harm had been done to the capacity for memory, which the capture—and more importantly, the exposure—of Adolf Eichmann might alleviate, if only in part. A critical component of the "Final Solution" was the denial of the crime itself, the complete disavowal that it ever happened. Through isolation, forced relocation, and eventual mass murder, even the memory of the Jewish people was to be destroyed. In all of this, Adolf Eichmann played a central role, even in his aversion to the truth of this crimes.
The Malleability of Identity
Throughout the novel, identity is a primary concern of the characters. Identity in The Nazi Hunters is established both individually and collectively, actively and passively. In the book, identity is treated as a malleable, if not artificial, construct, one that can be at least superficially altered and changed to suit one's purposes. The spies and investigators frequently assume false identities, travel in disguises, and forge documents, creating and cycling through identities as they carry out their missions. Such tradecraft rests upon the idea that one's identity can be split between surface and interior; this deception is an important driver of the plot. In The Nazi Hunters, deception is used to unveil deception, and to establish identity. Both Adolf Eichmann and his pursuers employ this. However, this goes deeper than intelligence gathering. Even Sylvia and Lothar Hermann choose not to reveal their Jewish heritage, fearing for their safety amidst the latent anti-Semitism of postwar Argentina. Nick Eichmann lets slip that his father was a leading member of the SS; suspicious, the Hermanns then trick the Eichmanns into allowing Sylvia to confirm their suspicions. The Hermanns discover that the Nick's "Uncle Ricardo" is just a ruse; his real identity is none other than Adolf Eichmann. The roleEichmann plays is the active construction of an identity, a deception. However, the passive construction of identity—that is, the identities placed on others—has more far-reaching and tragic significance in The Nazi Hunters.
Nazi Germany's policies sought to mark and isolate Europe's Jewish populations, treating them as a single entity. This was in line with the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and rhetoric, which argued Jews were a hostile population within Germanyand other countries. Therefore, it was It was deemed necessary that all Jews were singled out as potential threats, and labeled as "enemies of the state"; the infamous "Yellow Star" was the first step of this process.
In the context of the events leading up to the displacement, terror, and mass murder of the Holocaust, these actions are important, because they illustrate how Nazi Germany developed and sustained an artificial identity for the Jewish peoples of Europe, one which erased their history of citizenship and paved the way for their persecution and extermination. One of the explicit justifications Eichmann reiterates in statements to his staff in 1945 is that the Jews were tobe "enemies of the state."However, this does not only refer to Jewish people in Germany or Austria, but the entire continent of Europe. To reiterate, this policy does not just persecute minorities in one country, nor simply refuse to distinguish between soldiers and civilians in another, but in fact declares civilians of foreign nations to be "enemies of the Nazi state". For Zeev Sapir and his family, living in Hungary, this forceful change of identity engenders the cruelty and absurdity they will face at Auschwitz and other camps. This is a characteristic pattern of Nazi aggression: one's enemies are not established by what they have done, but merely by who they are. Simply by existing, Sapir and his family have been falsely implicated in this hateful policy, and made to suffer untold misery.
These tragic circumstances had a number of profound and long-lasting consequences for questions of identity. One of the consequences of this kind of malicious racial policy is to shatter identities and decimate communities. When Zeev Sapir returns to Hungary, he finds he cannot resume his life—whatever existence he had before is gone. Through the commission of genocide, the Nazis sought to uproot and destroy these communities and the identities of their citizens, along with the individuals themselves. However, the Holocaust created another, unintended consequence: displaced survivors aiding in the creation of Israel. Both Sapir and Simon Wiesenthal are examples of this. The latter’s life and identity as a promising architect are destroyed by the Holocaust, and he and others dedicate the rest of their lives to bringing justice to those responsible. Part of this justice comes in the form of a collective identity for Jews via a viable nation-state.When Eichmann is caught in Buenos Aires, he states that he knew it was the Israelis. The significance of this statement is profound, in that Eichmann knows that the aggression and persecution he has carried out against the Jewish peoples of Europe has brought these people together against him. Indeed, when Eichmann is on trial in Jerusalem, prosecutor Gideon Hausner makes clear that this trial—and by effect, the nation of Israel itself—exists to answer these crimes.
Legality Versus Morality
The Nazi Hunters enacts conflicts of legality versus morality, as many characters are faced with doing the "right thing" versus doing what is legal. Deference to legality typically involves an avoidance of responsibility, or at least "turning a blind eye" to "moral" consequences, versus practical ones. This view is complicated by the heavy incidence and use of tradecraft and clandestine activity for moral ends. The premiere example of this flouting of strict legality is the capture of Eichmann in Buenos Aires by the agents of the Mossad and Shin Bet.
In the preparation for the mission, the agents forge documents and falsify diplomatic credentials with the intention to hoodwink the Argentine government, so the Israelis may capture one of its foreign nationals. This is based on the determination the Israelis make: that normal, legal extradition procedures for Eichmann would likely not work. The Israelis simply do not trust the Argentine and West German governments to act swiftly and forcefully enough to bring Eichmann to justice. This mistrust, however, is based upon the readiness of these governments to provide Eichmann with a false identity in Argentina, and shelter him there. That Adolf Eichmann—under the false identity of "Ricardo Klement"—may even be considered a citizen of Argentina, and therefore subject to the protections of legality, is a farce, and an affront to justice. Eichmann's flight from Western Europe to Argentina, and his protection in Argentina, show another dimension of this conflict: the use of legality to pursue one's desires while deflecting moral responsibility The events of Eichmann's own life, beginning with his role in Nazi Germany, illustrate this tendency.
Adolf Eichmann's actions while in the SS—accepting bribes, organizing torture, plunder, and incentivizing the mass murder of captured populations— violated numerous national and international laws. Why then, does Eichmann commit these actions? There are two reasons, both of which will echo throughout the remainder of his life: they are expedient to him (or his career), and he has been ordered to do so.
Eichmann's willingness to commit these actions demonstrates not a moral consideration, but simply practical calculations of loss, gain, and risk. Adolf Eichmann was an intelligent individual, who in these kinds of situations was able to calculate risks. However, at no point in these calculations were moral considerations included. Moreover, for Eichmann, the moral question was not only left unconsidered, but explicitly denied: Eichmann chose not to engage with moral questions, even when his own sensibilities were provoked, in cases such as witnessing mass executions in Poland and other places. This creates an important distinction, one which illuminates how the framing of these questions is important: the question of legality versus morality is only relevantwhen individuals believe themselves to be responsible for achieving moral ends.Individuals have to believe themselves personally accountable to act morally, in order for morality to be possible. This does not guarantee that individuals will do so. Morality is only possible in the context of choices; Adolf Eichmann obscures this reality through defending his actions as "only following orders."
Eichmann does not believe himself to be personally accountable for the mass murder and genocide of the Holocaust, given that he did not set the policy, and instead only carried it out. This rhetorical move conceals, however, Eichmann's willingness to place himself in the service of a regime that would act in such a way; for him to suggest he committed no crime, in regard to the Holocaust, is to argue implicitly that the policy was correct, that the Jewish peoples of Europe were indeed enemies of the state and the true aggressors, deserving of extermination. Eichmann does not say this explicitly, but implicit to such a defense is the belief that agreeing to an act is not the same. In effect, he is trying to hide his own, personal role in the collective action of Nazi Germany during the war. Despite these implications, Eichmann was not forced to carry out the role prepared for him; rather, he chose to do so to enhance his career, to secure to his professional and political status, and because he believed in the cause. He labored to destroy those whom he considered the enemies of the Reich. That the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany enabled him to do so was a coincidence he leveraged into an opportunity.
The lesson of the horrors wrought by Eichmann is that legality is not an essentially moral field, nor is it a shield that deflects and sanitizes our desires and intentions. On the contrary, and as someone like Eichmann proves, law, and even the idea of "legality" are just tools, which, in the hands of the wrong person, may permit evil and blind oneself to one's conscience.
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