Michael Johnston: The banality of evil shoe salesmen

I’ve always thought of Wellington as being a bit like Tolkien’s Hobbiton. It’s peaceful, comfortable, and largely ignored by the dark forces of the world. But evil can lurk in the unlikeliest of places – even, it would seem, in Wellington.

In 1963 philosopher Hannah Arendt published Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Adolf Eichmann was a senior Nazi bureaucrat, responsible for the deportation of Jews and others deemed undesirable by Hitler’s regime, to concentration camps.

In 1960 he was captured by Israeli secret services in Argentina. He was put on trial in Jerusalem, which is where Arendt encountered him.