Hilberg, Raul 1926-2007

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born June 2, 1926, in Vienna, Austria; died of lung cancer, August 4, 2007, in Williston, VT. Holocaust scholar, historian, educator, and author. Hilberg has been called a founder of the field of Holocaust studies, but the very term was one that he reportedly disliked and distrusted. In his controversial book, The Destruction of the European Jews, originally published in 1961 then expanded in 1985 and 2003, he bypassed the prevailing focus on the institutionalized Nazi extermination to look at the anonymous, ordinary people who enabled the Nazi movement to roll across Europe. Hilberg's position was that the destruction of European Jewry could not have occurred without the cooperation (unwitting or otherwise) of bureaucrats, ticket agents, guards, and others who had perpetuated the gradual isolation, discrimination, extortion, and transportation of an entire ethnic group to the point where annihilation was just one more step in the process. The most controversial part of his thesis may have been the claim that many Jews themselves were tacit enablers of their own fate because of the weakness of their self-defense. It took Hilberg a long time to find a publisher for his book, but he remained steadfast in his convictions, despite his own background as an Austrian Jew whose family was allowed by the Nazi occupiers to flee the country if they were willing to leave their property behind. In a later book, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945 (1992), Hilberg explained his views in greater detail, especially regarding the ‘victims,’ whose stories comprised an entire section of the book, but acceptance of his perspective was never universal. Hilberg obtained a teaching position at the University of Vermont in 1956 and remained there until his retirement in 1991. Hilberg taught Holocaust studies when it finally became recognized as a legitimate field of scholarship. He became a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council but, because of his critical views on the Jewish resistance during the war, his presence was not welcome at the Israeli equivalent of the council, Yad Vashem. The source of most of his original research remained the primary documents he had uncovered as an American soldier in Munich at the end of World War II. On the other hand, Hilberg was not only accepted in Germany and his native Austria, but he was honored by a post-Holocaust generation trying to understand its gruesome legacy. In 2006 Hilberg was awarded Germany's highest recognition for a foreigner: the knight commander's cross of the Order of Merit. Hilberg discussed his long struggle for acceptance in his autobiography, The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian (1996). His other writings include Sources of Holocaust Research: An Analysis (2001).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Hilberg, Raul, The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 1996.

Lansmann, Claude, Shoah: The Complete Text of the Acclaimed Holocaust Film, Da Capo Press (New York, NY), 1955.

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, August 7, 2007, p. B11.

New York Times, August 7, 2007, p. C11.

Times (London, England), August 8, 2007, p. 48.

Washington Post, August 8, 2007, p. B6.