Hannah ArendtHannah Arendt, "Deportations from Western Europe" Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was born in Hannover, Germany, and earned a
B.A. in 1924 from Königsberg University and a Ph.D. in 1928 from
Heidelberg University. She emigrated to the U.S. in 1941 and became a
citizen about ten years later. Arendt was a social worker, a book editor,
and taught at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and at
the New School for Social Research. Her books include The Origins of
Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), Eichmann
in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), and On Violence
(1970). Among her many awards and prizes, Arendt was both a Guggenheim
and a Rockefeller fellow and held numerous honorary degrees. Arendt died
of heart failure in New York City. "Deportations from Western Europe"
is an excerpt from Eichmann in Jerusalem. | QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION | CONTENT - Explain the "first mistake" the Germans made that Arendt
describes in paragraph four.
- What two incidents in the summer of 1942 caught the attention of
the court in Jerusalem?
- Why does the author put quotation marks around the word resettlement
in paragraph two?
- From what country of origin are Sephardic Jews? How were they treated
differently in Salonika than in Holland?
- Who was Vidkun Quisling?
- What was similar about the treatment of Jewish people in Holland
and Poland during the Nazi occupation? What was different?
- Discuss the general treatment of the Jews in Denmark during the
occupation, and how it differed from the other countries under study
here.
STRATEGY AND STYLE - Were you able to translate all the foreign words and phrases found
in this essay? They include nation par excellence, judenrien,
sui generis, and pur se débrouiller. If you weren't
familiar with them, look them up now. In any case, why do you think
the author consistently uses foreign words and phrases here?
- Discuss this piece as either a division/classification essay or
a comparison/contrast essay. What kind of evidence does the author usually
provide to make her case?
- How would you characterize the tone of this piece? Is it chatty,
personal, impersonal, academic, or something else? Make sure you describe
the tone clearly and use evidence from the reading to support your answer.
- The author frequently makes use of very specific numbers throughout
this reading. For example, in paragraph fourteen the reader learns that
Sweden accepted "5,919 refugees," "1,310... half-Jews,"
and "686... non-Jews." How would the nature of this information
change if the author substituted more general terms for these numbers?
What's the advantage of being so specific?
| ENGAGING THE TEXT | - What media images of the Holocaust have you seen? Which of them,
if any, ran through your mind as you read this essay?
- What do you think of when you think of evil? Are evil people necessarily
insane? Did you think of any of these things during your reading? Are
you thinking of any part of the reading now?
| SUGGESTIONS FOR SUSTAINED WRITING | - In paragraph ten, the author uses the phrase the bureaucracy
of murder. How are these two words related? Could the Nazis have
done the things they did without relying upon a bureaucracy? What evidence
in the essay, especially concerning Denmark, suggests that they could
not have?
- When discussing the treatment of the Jews in Italy during World
War II, the author mentions jokes and farce. Is she being sarcastic?
How can you tell? Did you find anything amusing in her description?
How are horror and comedy related?
| FOR FURTHER RESEARCH | Pick a country from Eastern Europe and do some research about the treatment
of Jewish people there during World War II. What major differences do
you see compared to the essay you've just read? What's similar? | WEB CONNECTION | Read these reviews
of Arendt's book about Adolph Eichmann. Some of them are blurbs. What
methods would you use to find the whole review in these cases? What information
on this page would you feel comfortable about using for a paper about
"Deportations from Western Europe", and what information would
you avoid using? Why? What's a major difference between the two types
of reviews found here? | LINKS | Biographical Here's a good start page
from the Jewish Virtual Library. On it, you'll find a photo, an in-depth
biography, two bibliographies, and some further links. This link
will take you to an Arendt biography that also contains a photo and
related links. How does the information you've found here differ from
that on the page above? What, do you think, accounts for the difference?
Bibliographical Ready for some of Arendt's work in etext? Take a visit to the homepage
of The Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress. There, you'll
find information about 25,000 related items, some of which are accessible
online. Looking for a great quotation by Arendt to use in a paper? Here's
a collection
of quotes, arranged by topic, that you'll find handy.
Cultural Did you know that Arendt and the philosopher Martin Heidegger had
a passionate—and secret—love affair? Read more about it here. Arendt did her dissertation on the subject of love in the writings
of St. Augustine. You can find out more about these issues by visiting
this page
called "The World of Hannah Arendt."
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