No Gentile who was an adult in the years of the Final Solution can read Eichmann in Jerusalem without some remorse and self-questioning. American Jews, far from the scene then and now, may feel certain misgivings too, reading the book, especially the richer ones who paid large sums of money to the Nazis for the ransom of their relatives and did not concern themselves too greatly with the fate of “ordinary” Jews. Miss Arendt’s harshness on this point may seem to them unkind and inappropriate in what they still think of as a time of mourning; it is like somebody who criticizes at a funeral. But the question is whether those who merely grieve for their fellow-beings show more compassion than those who in retrospect seek remedies, since to seek remedies implies a continuing concern that what happened shall never happen again. The State of Israel promises that to Jews, politically, by offering them a homeland, an army, and a foreign policy. “You are safe now,” it tells them. Miss Arendt is not interested in the safety of Jews but in the safety of humanity. Trying to learn from history, she is thinking ahead on behalf of other “superfluous” people who may be the next “Jews” on someone’s list for “resettlement in the east.” Yet the official Israeli lesson supposedly taught by the trial—the need for a strong national state—is at very sharp variance with any parable for the Gentiles, i.e., not only non-Jews but all the tribes and the peoples.