A Rebuttal to Hannah Arendt (1965)

This episode of YIVO’s radio program on WEVD, originally broadcast on October 3, 1965, is devoted to an interview with Dr. Jacob Robinson about his book, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight; The Eichmann Trial, the Jewish Catastrophe, a rebuttal to Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

Robinson (1889-1977) was a jurist, politician, diplomat, and Holocaust researcher. In 1941, he established the Institute for Jewish Affairs (IJA), the research arm of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress, which he directed until 1947. The IJA’s main topics of research were the fate of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe; the question of reparation and indemnification; the legal basis for prosecuting Nazi criminals; and the promotion of the concept of human rights as a means for defending the rights of Jews. In 1957, he became the legal adviser for the Conference on Material Claims Against Germany, and helped coordinate research on the Holocaust, including projects involving YIVO and Yad Vashem.

From 1963-1976, YIVO had its own program on WEVD, the radio station established by the Socialist Party of America in 1927 (its call letters stand for the initials of American socialist leader Eugene V. Debs), which was purchased by the Jewish Daily Forward in 1932 and became a major venue from Yiddish programming.

YIVO used its spot on WEVD for Yiddish-language interviews and discussions with leading New York Yiddish cultural figures, as well as for reporting on its own scholarly and cultural work.

A new podcast of this program in the order in which it was originally broadcast will be posted here every two weeks.

Presentation of series curated by Matt Temkin, YIVO Sound Archives.

Listen to the program [in Yiddish].