The banality of evil on trial

Within the initiatives fostered on the occasion of the Holocaust Memorial Day, the Diocesan Museum in Trento suggests the performance Processo alla banalità del male. Adolf Eichmann: un criminale moderno (The banality of the evil on trial. Adolf Eichmann: a modern criminal),  based on The banality of evil by Hannah Arendt.

Dramaturgy and direction by Maura Pettorusso

with Maura Pettorusso, Alessio Dalla Costa, Stefano Detassis

lights and sound by Alice Colla

a production TrentoSpettacoli in co-production with Provincia Autonoma di Trento.

When Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped in Buenos Aires in 1960, where he was hidden, and taken to Jerusalem, in Israel, in order to be subjected to trial for the crimes committed by the Nazi Regime and by him during the Second World War, the world, the society and the history itself was confronted by a new very important chance: the opportunity to understand. To understand which is the face of the monster. To understand how a man can become that monster. To understand where the boundary between human and beastly lies. Eichmann, during the trial in Jerusalem, seems a normal, ordinary, mediocre man: is he the monster?

The performance moves from the same chance: the opportunity to understand. A text that reminds us once again the disturbing rationality of the extermination of Jewish people. A performance that allows people to understand, analyse and not forget one of the most horrifying periods of the history of the Twentieth Century.