Although Hannah Arendt is not primarily known as a Jewish thinker; she probably wrote more about Jewish issues than any other topic. As a young adult in Germany; she wrote about German Jewish history. After moving to France in 1933; she helped Jewish youth immigrate to Palestine. During her years in Paris; her principle concern was the transformation of antinomianism from prejudice to policy; which would culminate in the Nazi "final solution." After France fell; Arendt escaped from an internment camp and made her way to America. There she wrote articles calling for a Jewish army to fight the Nazis. After the war; she supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in a binational (Arab-Jewish) state of Israel.Arendt's original conception of political freedom cannot be fully grasped apart from her experience as a Jew. In 1961 she attended Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem. Her report; Eichmann in Jerusalem; provoked an immense controversy; which culminated in her virtual excommunication from the worldwide Jewish community. Today that controversy is the subject of serious re-evaluation; especially among younger people in the United States; Europe; and Israel.The publication of The Jewish Writings–much of which has never appeared before–traces Arendt’s life and thought as a Jew. It will put an end to any doubts about the centrality; from beginning to end; of Arendt’s Jewish experience.
#1106965 in Books Holt Paperbacks 2008-01-08 2008-01-08Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.50 x .33 x 5.50l; 1.00 #File Name: 0805089144144 pages
Review
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful. "People go into a tunnel in the mountain; and along the way there is a great hole and they all fall in and disappear."By Kerry WaltersOne of the abiding insights that comes through in Goetz Ally's Into the Tunnel is just how efficient bureaucracies can be at transforming vibrantly alive human beings into impersonal statistics on official forms. In their extermination program; the Nazis; with an eerie fidelity to record-keeping; felt the need to document every detail of the lives they were destroying. That's why Aly is able to trace the unhappy fate of the beautiful little girl; Marion Samuel; who is the protagonist of this unhappy tale.Such exercises are important; they help to keep memory alive. But Aly's book is more of a model of historical research than a sustained biography that captures who Marion Samuel was. This is as it must be. Nazi documentation records dates when the Samuel family loses its business; moves from one locale to another; and is rounded up for deportation to Auschwitz; but little else. There are few photographs left; and family memories on both Cilly's (Marion's mother) and Ernst's (her father) side have dimmed (or were outright obliterated by the Holocaust). So what we have in this book is a lot of data that leaves us with the sinking awareness that the 12-year old Marion simply disappeared in a wide ocean of bureaucratic files and forms even before she was murdered and incinerated at Auschwitz.Still; we get glimpses of her; and those glimpses are all the more poignant for being so incomplete. One of her schoolmates recalls that in 1938; a full five years before her murder; an 8-year old Marion was already feeling the burden of the Nazi horror. She remembers (p. 82) that at one point a near-hysterical Marion blurted out her fear that Jews were disappearing into an ominous tunnel. We also know that at the final roundup; Marion was separated for three full days from her parents; and sent to a detention warehouse full of equally parentless children. Marion's mother; Cilly; was sent on to Auschwitz and quite likely was immediately murdered. Marion and her father Ernst were reunited in the same transport that took them both to Auschwitz. One can only imagine the forlornness Marion experienced before she was reunited with her father for their final journey into the tunnel. Both were murdered a week later.It's good that Aly's work allows us to know something of a child; unspeakably murdered before she barely had a chance to live; who otherwise would've totally disappeared.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A worthy tributeBy BookskiGotz Aly set out to discover who Marion Samuel was after being named the recipient of the "Marion Samuel Prize." Using the best of his historical detection skills he was able to piece together her short; tragic life that ended at the hands of the Nazis. This book is concise; informative; and heartbreaking.24 of 25 people found the following review helpful. The Death and Life of an Enemy of the German VolkBy Grey WolffeMarion Samuel was eleven years old when she arrived at Auschwitz in March of 1943; she was gassed to death the same day and her body burned in the crematorium. He ashes were thrown into a pit with hundreds of others and then covered over with soil. Their is no marker over where she died.But who was this child and what was her crime that she should be treated so. She came from a lower middle class family from West Pomerania; near the Baltic Sea where the German-Polish border is today. At the age of six she was a witness to Kristallnacht and forbidden to go to the German Public School she had attended for the last three years. He family lost their business and both her parent's became "unskilled" factory workers. Marion was able to go to a "Jewish" school for two more years; before those were shut down. For the last years of her life she lived in a one room ground floor apartment off an alley. Since her parent's were away each day; she had to fill her time as best she could.How did she view the world she lived in? Did she wonder why she and her parents were being treated the way they were? Did she have any understanding that she was being punished for a random act of birth? At least we know she was on the same train as her father (who lasted sixty one days in the camp) when she was "evacuated". Thankfully; the horrors at the end for this little girl were tempered by the comfort of a parent.Hopefully; the people that ordered her death; and carried it out; suffered for what they did.
