LETTERS: Eichmann in Jerusalem: Correspondence Archive.
The Hannah Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem Archive:
A Controversy Told Through Correspondence
1961-1963
Arendt, Hannah, et al. Eichmann in Jerusalem: Related Correspondence. 1961-63.
Ca. 90 items. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
Approximately 90 letters, notes, telegrams, and publishing memorandum relating to Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963) and the controversy that erupted following the publication of Justice Michael A. Musmanno’s vitriolic review, which appeared in The New York Times Book Review on May 19, 1963.
This remarkable collection of letters tells the story of the critical storm that erupted following Musmanno’s searing indictment of Arendt’s viewpoint and alleged distortion of facts regarding the Eichmann trial. In his review of Eichmann in Jerusalem, Musmanno accused Arendt of being an Eichmann sympathizer and of dangerously displacing blame for the Nazi atrocities of WWII. By depicting Eichmann as a small-minded cog in the German totalitarian machine, Musmanno claimed Arendt was removing him from the realm of moral responsibility, thus reducing the magnitude of his crimes. Shortly after the review ran, letters flooded the offices of The New York Times, The Viking Press, and The New Yorker, where sections of Eichmann in Jerusalem were printed serially prior to the publication of the book.
The correspondence begins in 1961, when Arendt was just beginning to consider the possibility of publishing a book comprised primarily of her pieces in The New Yorker. She refers to the project somewhat mockingly as a “non-book” and expresses doubt as to whether Viking would want to option a collection of such recent vintage. She writes, “My coverage of the Eichmann trial: I still think, hope, it won’t be a book…. If you are interested to do just the New Yorker material without expansion, and if I feel that this is a possibility…. you see there are many ifs…” (May 26, 1961). Arendt, however, unsatisfied with the media trial coverage, could not abandon the issue. In a letter from the same year to her editor at Viking, Denver Lindley, she writes, “I would so very much want to write the truth about this whole business which is even more complicated than I thought when I left. The trial seems to have been well covered but as far as I can see, everybody is leaning over backwards in one direction or the other…” (June 1961).
Much of the original Arendt material in the archive concerns Arendt’s reactions to the accusations in Justice Musmanno’s review of Eichmann in Jerusalem. In a TPCS to Denver Lindley, she reports that she has received “loads of furious letters from Germans and German Jews & a few nice ones from Americans of all denominations” (March 13, 1963). In a telegram to Newsweek editor Jack Kroll, she writes of the scandal: “Fortunate result of storm that important moral issues are discussed, unfortunate only the frequent misrepresentation of my position by people who never read me” (June 1963). Arendt maintains a calm, professional tone in all the letters relating to Musmanno, never betraying any emotional reaction to the scandal—she writes to Lindley on May 29, 1963, “Needless to say neither Musmanno nor the Times (of all things on earth) can disturb me. I just can’t take such nonsense seriously, although I know it can be dangerous.”
Arendt’s eloquent rebuttal to The New York Times Book Review was published along with a sampling of letters both supporting and attacking Musmanno’s review. In an ALS to Lindley dated June 1, 1963, Arendt explains why she chose to respond in the form of a Letter to the Editor as opposed to replying directly to Musmanno:
I did it very reluctantly because of my old principle: never reply unless you have something new to say or wish to retract. Not the case here. And to honor Musmanno with a reply—of all people! ... A reply to M. would have been preposterous.
And: not helpful
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