Similarities Between Arendt And Equiano

Both Arendt and Equiano have deeply personal and complicated relationships with horrible and major historical events. Equiano was enslaved as a child and witnessed and suffered the cruelty of the slave trade. Yet, presumably due at least partially to the age at which he was kidnapped, his forcible immersion into European culture greatly shaped his identity, including in ways that he says are positive. For her part, Arendt did not directly experience the Holocaust, but her Jewish identity creates a strong link to it regardless. Despite this, she found ample grounds to criticize the trial of Adolph Eichmann, as she felt that the trial was not truly about his actions. Despite the significant differences that exist between these two individuals and their experiences, they both offer insight to the complexities of how people relate to events that greatly impact and influence them. Arendt does not dispute that Eichmann committed truly horrendous acts; she notes that “the facts of the case were beyond dispute” …show more content…
That both of their positions rely, in part, on humanitarian strains of thought has important implications for the modern era. Humanitarian crises abound, the most severe of which is almost certainly the Syrian refugee crisis, which has elements that are related to the Holocaust and slavery, though it is also quite distinct. Both the slave trade and the Holocaust generally produced their victims by moving people to the location in which they were victimized from a place where they had been at home. Certainly there were Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis, but as far as genocide went, the movement was the other way. In contrast, the pressures on the Syrian people are primarily ones that drive them out of their homes to other places to avoid becoming