RIFLE RANGE BOY

Hannah Arendt (German, English; 2012) Hannah Arendt, a political thinker, who is famous for her assessment of the Eichmann trial and the coining of the phrase 'banality of evil' is depicted here. The film depicts the time surrounding the trial and the controversies of Arendt's articles in the New Yorker and her subsequent book, 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' in 1963. First of all, the trial was considered an illegal exercise. Eichmann was charged in the Israeli Courts for cruelty against humanity as if Israel had jurisdiction over this; there was already the Nuremberg trial for that, and the International Courts would be the appropriate platform to try war crimes. Furthermore, the Israeli Secret Service, Mossad,  apprehended him in Argentina through clandestine methods. Prime Minister of Israel then, Ben Gurion, thought it was apt that the world should hear the plight of the Jews during the Second World War. It was an opportune time for the Jews to showcase to th...

Experimenter (2015) Now, how often have we seen seemingly good people doing incomprehensibly evil deeds which are atypical of their general behaviour and predisposition? Too many times, middle management officers had been cruel beyond comprehension just because they were given the authority to do so. Even though, these junior officials know it is wrong to do certain things, they still do it as long as somebody else is taking charge. This phenomenon of blind obedience to authority was a favourite subject of Dr Stanley Milgram, a Jewish psychologist whose relatives perished in Hitler's concentration camps. The question of the Holocaust and the justification for the acts of genocide by those accused at the Nuremberg trial must have been close to his heart. Around the time of Eichmann trial, in 1962, in Yale, Milgram performed an ingenious social experiment (see Youtube clip below) which was later condemned as unethical, for invoking emotional stress is some participants, to ...

Hannah Arendt (2012, English, German, Hebrew) Yes, this is story of the chain smoking Jewish-American philosopher who at the height of her career would be sent to Israel in 1962 for observation and coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel for atrocities against the Jews in Nazi Germany during WW2.  She was thought to be the best candidate to cover the event as she herself, a Jewess, was a victim of Nazi imprisonment in France during WW2.  What she was saw during her trial changed her life and her reputation forever. She could not understand why such an unimpressive servant who is just an ordinary man without any epitome of evil could do something so horrendous without an iota of guilt. He was just doing his job of transporting as if it was the most important thing in the world without thinking. He was more interested in completing his job (of transporting Jewish prisoners to Auschwitz concentration camp) than thinking on the consequences of his work. She r...