Raul Hilberg

Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 - August 4, 2007) was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the doyen of the postwar generation of Holocaust scholars, and his three-volume, 1,273-page "magnum opus", "The Destruction of the European Jews," is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final Solution.

Biography

Hilberg was born to a Polish-Romanian Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. Following the March 1938 Anschluss, his father was arrested by the Nazis, but was released because of his service record as a combatant in World War I. One year later, on April 1, 1939, at age 13, Hilberg fled Austria with his family; after reaching France, they embarked on a ship bound for Cuba. Following a four-month stay in Cuba, his family arrived in the United States on September 1, 1939, the day the Second World War broke out in Europe. ['Raul Hilberg' = http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070806/OBITUARIES/708060352/1010/OBITUARIES] During the ensuing war in Europe, Hilberg's family was to lose 26 members in the Holocaust. [ Luc Ferry and S.Passquier, interview with Hilberg, ‘Les fonctionnaires du génocide’, in "L’Express international", May 27, 1988 pp.50-58, Cited Gie Van den Berghe, ‘The Incompleteness of a Masterpiece: Raul Hilberg and the Destruction of European Jews’, BTNG-RBHC, 1990, 1-2 pp.110-124 p.110 n.1 ]

The Hilbergs settled in Brooklyn, New York, where Raul attended Abraham Lincoln High School and Brooklyn College. He intended to make a career in chemistry, but found that it did not suit him, and left his studies to work in a factory. Having reached draft age, he was then called up for military service.

Hilberg served first in the 45th Infantry Division (United States) in World War II, but, given his native fluency and academic interests, was soon attached to the War Documentation Department, charged with examining archives throughout Europe. It was his discovery of part of Hitler's crated private library in Munich, which he stumbled across while quartered in the Braunes Haus, that prompted his research into the Holocaust, a term for the genocidal destruction of the Jews which Hilberg personally disliked, [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article2217692.ece "Raul Hilberg"] , "The Times", (London), August 8, 2007.] though in later years he himself used it. [In a recent lecture in Vienna he is on record as saying,'We know perhaps 20 per cent about the Holocaust,' Times Obituary ibid]

Academic career

After returning to civilian life, Hilberg chose to study political science, earning his B.A. at Brooklyn College in 1948. He was deeply impressed by the importance of elites and bureaucracies while attending Hans Rosenberg's lectures on the Prussian civil service. At one particular point in Rosenberg's course, Hilberg was taken aback by a remark his teacher dropped:

"The most wicked atrocities perpetrated on a civilian population in modern times occurred during the Napoleonic occupation of Spain."

The young Hilberg was prompted to interrupt the lecture and ask why the recent murder of 6 million Jews didn't figure in Rosenberg's assessment. Rosenberg replied that it was a complicated matter, but that the lectures only dealt with history down to 1930, adding, "History doesn’t reach down into the present age." Hilberg was amazed by the terrible irony of a German Jewish emigrant, highly educated and by no means a fool, passing over the genocide of European Jews in order to expound on Napoleon and the occupation of Spain. The episode served to strengthen his interest in a subject that was at risk of suffering serious neglect.Götz Aly, [http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/startseite/article8kag6_1.445521.html "Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg",] in "Neue Zürcher Zeitung", 10 December 2002]

Hilberg went on to complete first an M.A. (1950), and then a Ph.D (1955), at Columbia University, Associated Press, [http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/06/america/NA-GEN-US-Obit-Hilberg.php "Holocaust Scholar Raul Hilberg dies at 81"] , "International Herald Tribune," August 6, 2007.] where he entered the graduate program in Public Law and Government. Meanwhile, in 1951, he obtained a temporary appointment to work on the War Documentation Project under the direction of Fritz Epstein.

Hilberg was undecided under whom he should carry out his doctoral research. Having attended a course on International Law, he was also attracted to the lectures of Salo Baron, the leading authority on Jewish historiography at the time, with particular expertise in the field of laws pertaining to the Jewish people. According to Hilberg, to attend Baron's lectures was to enjoy the rare opportunity of observing "a walking library, a monument of incredible erudition", active before his classroom of students. Baron asked Hilberg whether he was interested in working under him on the annihilation of Europe's Jewish population. Hilberg demurred on the grounds that his interest lay in the "perpetrators," and thus he would not begin with the Jews who were their victims, but rather with what was done to them.

Hilberg decided to write the greater part of his Ph.D. under the supervision of Franz Neumann, the author of an influential wartime analysis of the German totalitarian state. Neumann was initially reluctant to take Hilberg on as his doctoral student. He had already read Hilberg's master's thesis, and found, as both a deeply patriotic German and a Jew, that certain themes sketched there were unbearably painful. In particular he had asked that the section on Jewish cooperation be removed, to no avail. ["«Streichen Sie das!» - «Stimmt das nicht?», entgegnete ich. Darauf er: «Nein, too much to take - das ist zu viel." Götz Aly, "Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg", ibid.] Neumann nonetheless relented, warning his student, however, that such a dissertation might well prove to be his academic funeral. Undeterred by the prospect, Hilberg pressed on without regard for the possible consequences.Douglas Martin, [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/us/07hilberg.html "Raul Hilberg: Historian Who Wrote of the Holocaust as a Bureaucracy, Dies"] , "The New York Times", August 7, 2007.] Neumann himself contacted Nuremberg prosecutor Telford Taylor directly, to facilitate Hilberg's access to the appropriate archives. After Neumann's untimely death in a traffic accident in 1954, Hilberg completed his doctoral requirement under the supervision of a Quaker, Professor Fox.

Hilberg obtained his first academic position at the University of Vermont in Burlington, in 1955, and took up residence there in January 1956. Most of his teaching career was spent at the university, where he was a member of the Department of Political Science; he was appointed emeritus professor upon his retirement in 1991.

Hilberg was appointed to the President's Commission on the Holocaust by Jimmy Carter in 1979. He later served for many years on its successor, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, which is the governing body for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. [http://www.americangathering.com/?p=2609 "A Remembrance of Raul Hilberg",] by Michael Berenbaum] For his seminal and profound services to the historiography of the Holocaust, he was honored with Germany's Order of Merit, the highest recognition that can be paid to a non-German. In 2002, he was awarded the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis for "Die Quellen des Holocaust" (Sources of the Holocaust). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on April 26, 2005.

Personal life

Hilberg had two children, David and Deborah, by his first wife, Christine Hemenway. After his divorce, in 1980 he married Gwendolyn Montgomery.

Although of Jewish heritage, Hilberg was not religious, and considered himself an atheist. In his autobiographical reflections he stated, "The fact is that I have had no God." [.Raul Hilberg, "The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian," Chicago: Ivan R. Dee; 1996, p. 36] In a 2001 interview that addressed the issue of Holocaust denial, he said, "I am an atheist. But there is ultimately, if you don't want to surrender to nihilism entirely, the matter of a [historical] record." [ [http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4150203-101750,00.html "The war on truth",] by DD Guttenplan, "The Guardian," March 12, 2001]

Though a non-smoker, Hilberg died following a recurrence of lung cancer on August 4, 2007, aged 81, in Williston, Vermont.

"The Destruction of the European Jews"

Hilberg is best known for his magisterial study of the Holocaust, "The Destruction of the European Jews". His final doctoral supervisor, Professor Fox, a kindly and courteous man, worried that the original study was far too long. Hilberg therefore suggested submitting a mere quarter of the research he had written up; the proposal was approved, and his doctorate honored, with the opportunity to be published by Columbia University Press in a press run of 850 copies. However, Hilberg was firm in desiring that the whole work be published, not just a fragment. To obtain that, two opinions in favor of full publication were required. The work was duly submitted to two additional academic authorities in the field, but both judgments were negative, viewing Hilberg's work as polemical: one rejected it as anti-German, the other as anti-Jewish. [Götz Aly, 'Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg ', ibid.]

Struggle for publication

Hilberg, unwilling to compromise, submitted the complete manuscript to several major publishing houses over the following six years, without luck. Princeton University Press turned down the manuscript, after quickly vetting it in a mere two weeks. After successive rejections from five prominent publishers, it finally went to press in 1961 under a minor imprint, the Chicago-based publisher, Quadrangle Books. By good fortune, a wealthy patron, Frank Petschek, a German-Czech whose family coal business had suffered from the Nazi Aryanization program, [Harold James, 'Schwere moralische Schuld,', in "Die Zeit" September, 1995 =http://images.zeit.de/text/1995/09/Schwere_moralische_Schuld] laid out $15,000, a substantial sum at the time, to cover the costs of a print run of 5,500 volumes, [Götz Aly, 'Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg ', ibid.] of which some 1,300 copies were set aside for distribution to libraries.

Resistance to Hilberg's work, the difficulties he encountered in finding a U.S. editor, and subsequent delays with the German edition, owed much to the Cold War atmosphere of the times. Norman Finkelstein, in his obituary, remarks:

'It is hard now to remember that the Nazi holocaust was once a taboo subject. During the early years of the Cold War, mention of the Nazi holocaust was seen as undermining the critical U.S.-West German alliance. It was airing the dirty laundry of the barely de-Nazified West German elites and thereby playing into the hands of the Soviet Union, which didn't tire of remembering the crimes of the West German "revanchists."Norman Finkelstein, [http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein08222007.html "Remembering Raul Hilberg"] , "Counterpunch", August 22, 2007.]

The German rights to the book were acquired by the German publishing firm, Droemer Knaur, in 1963. Droemer Knaur, however, after dithering over it for two years, decided against publication, due to the work's documentation of certain episodes of cooperation by Jewish authorities with the executors of the Holocaust — material which the editors said would only play into the hands of the antisemitic right wing in Germany. Hilberg dismissed this fear as "nonsense". [Götz Aly, 'Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg ', ibid.] Some two decades were to pass before it finally came out in a German edition in 1982, under the imprint of a Berlin publishing house. [Raul Hilberg,"Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden," ed Ulf Wolter, tr.Christian Seeger, Olle & Wolter, Berlin 1982] Hilberg, a lifelong Republican voter, [Michael Neumann, 'In Memoriam: Raul Hilberg,' "Counterpunch", August 15, 2007.= http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann08152007.html] seemed to be somewhat bemused by the prospect of being published under such an imprint, and asked its director, Ulf Wolter, what on earth his massive treatise on the Holocaust had in common with some of the firm's staple themes, Socialism and Women's rights. Wolter replied succinctly: "Injustice!" [Götz Aly, 'Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg ', ibid.] In a letter of July 14, 1982 Hilberg had written to Mr. Wolter/Olle & Wolter "Everything you said to me during this brief visit has impressed me very much and has given me a good feeling about our joint venture. I am glad that you are my publisher in Germany." He spoke about a "second edition" of his work, "solid enough for the next century".

Approach and structure of book

"The Destruction of the European Jews" provided, in Hannah Arendt's words, 'the first clear description of (the) incredibly complicated machinery of destruction' set up under Nazism. [Hannah Arendt,"Eichmann in Jerusalem"(1963) rev.ed.1964 p.71] For Hilberg there was deep irony in the judgment since Arendt's opinion of his manuscript, that it dealt with things one no longer spoke about, had influenced the rejection slip he received from Princeton University Press following its submission, thus effectively denying him the prestigious auspices of a mainstream academic publishing house.

With a terse lucidity that ranged, with unsparing meticulousness, over the huge archives of Nazism, Hilberg delineated the history of the mechanisms, political, legal, administrative and organizational, whereby the Holocaust was perpetrated, as it was seen through German eyes, often by the anonymous clerks whose unquestioning dedication to their duties was central to the efficacy of the industrial project of genocide. To that end, Hilberg intentionally ignored laying emphasis on the suffering of Jews, the victims, or their life in the concentration camps. The Nazis had programmed something that was unprecedented in history - the decimation of all peoples whose existence was deemed incompatible with the world-historical destiny of a pure master race - and to accomplish this project, they had to develop techniques, muster resources, make bureaucratic decisions, organize fields and camps of extermination and recruit cadres capable of executing the "Final Solution". It was enough to chase down each intricate strand of complex communications over how to conduct the operation efficiently through the enormous archival papertrail to show how this took place. Thus his discourse probed, with surgical precision, the bureaucratic means for implementing genocide, in order to let the implicit horror of the process speak for itself. [Raul Hilberg, "The Destruction of the European Jews" (1961) 1973 Preface p.v ] In this he differed radically from those who had focused heavily on final responsibilities, as for example was the case of his predecessor Gerald Reitlinger's groundbreaking history of the subject. [Gerald Reitlinger,"The Final Solution",1953] Because of this layered departmentalized structure of the bureaucracy overseeing the intricate policies of classifying, mustering and deporting victims, individual functionaries saw their roles as distinct from the actual 'perpetration' of the Holocaust. ["For these reasons, an administrator, clerk or uniformed guard never referred to himself as a perpetrator,” cited 'Raul Hilberg:Historian Who Wrote of the Holocaust as a Bureaucracy, Dies ',http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/us/07hilberg.html] However, in the same interview, Hilberg made it clear that such functionaries were quite aware of their involvement in what was a process of destruction. [ [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/us/07hilberg.html Raul Hilberg, 81, Historian Who Wrote of the Holocaust as a Bureaucracy, Dies - New York Times ] ] Hilberg's minute documentation thus constructed a functional analysis of the machinery of genocide, while leaving in the air the larger questions of the deep historical hinterland of anti-semitism, and possible structural elements in Germany's historical-social tradition which might have conduced to the unparalleled industrialization of the European Jewish Catastrophe by that country. Yehuda Bauer, a life-long adversary and friend of Hilberg, who often clashed polemically with the man he considered 'without fault' over what Bauer saw as the latter's failure to deal with the complex dilemmas of Jews caught up in this machinery, recalls often prodding Hilberg on his exclusive focus on the "how" of the Holocaust rather than the "why". Hilberg would reply,-

'both to me and to others - that he did not ask the big questions for fear that the answers would be too little. [Yehuda Bauer ‘A human being without fault = ‘http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/907398.html ]

Hilberg's empirical, descriptive approach to the Holocaust in turn aroused considerable controversy, not least because of its details concerning the cooperation of Jewish councils in the actual procedures of evacuation to the camps.

Critical reception

At the time, most historians of the phenomenon subscribed to what would today be called the extreme intentionalist position, where sometime early in his career, Hitler developed a master plan for the genocide of the Jewish people and that everything that happened was the unfolding of the plan. This clashed with the lesson Hilberg had absorbed under Neumann, whose "Behemoth:The Structure and Practice of National Socialism" (1942) described the Nazi regime as a virtually stateless political order characterised by chronic bureaucratic infighting and turf disputes. The task Hilberg set for himself was to analyse the way the overall policies of genocide were engineered within the otherwise conflictual politics of Nazi factions. It helped that the Americans classifying the huge amount of Nazi documents used, precisely, the categories his future mentor Neumann had employed in his "Behemoth" study. [Michael Neumann, [http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann08152007.html "In Memoriam: Raul Hilberg"] , "Counterpunch", August 15, 2007.]

Hilberg came to be considered as the foremost representative of what a later generation has called the functionalist school of Holocaust historiography, of which Christopher Browning is a prominent member. This is an ongoing debate, around approximately the following basic points: Intentionalists argue that there was a master plan to launch the Holocaust, while functionalists argue there was not. Intentionalists argue that the initiative for the Holocaust came from above, while functionalists contend it came from lower ranks within the bureaucracy.

It has often been observed that Hilberg's magnum opus begins with an intentionalist thesis but gradually shifts towards a functionalist position. At the time, this approach raised a few eyebrows, but only later did it actually attract pointed controversy.verify source|date=February 2007 A further move towards a functionalist interpretation occurred in the revised 1985 edition, in which Hitler is portrayed as a remote figure hardly involved in the machinery of destruction. The terms "functionalist" and "intentionalist" were coined in 1981 by Timothy Mason but the origins of the debate go back to 1969–1970 with the publication of Martin Broszat's "The Hitler State" in 1969, and Karl Schleunes's "The Twisted Road to Auschwitz" in 1970. Since most of the early functionalist historians were West German, it was often enough for intentionalist historians, especially for those outside Germany, to note that men such as Broszat and Hans Mommsen had spent their adolescence in the Hitler Youth and then to say that their work was an apologia for National Socialism. Since Hilberg was an Austrian Jew who had fled to the United States to escape the Nazis, he obviously had no Nazi sympathies, which helps to explain the vehemence of the attacks by intentionalist historians that greeted the revised edition of "The Destruction of the European Jews" in 1985.

Hilberg's understanding of the relationship between the leadership of the Third Reich and the implementers of the genocide evolved from an interpretation based on orders to the RSHA originating with Adolf Hitler and proclaimed by Hermann Göring, to a thesis consistent with Christopher Browning's "The Origins of the Final Solution", an account in which initiatives were undertaken by mid-level officials in response to general orders from senior ones. Such initiatives were broadened by mandates from senior officials and propagated by increasingly informal channels. The experience gained in fulfilling the initiatives fed an understanding in the bureaucracy that radical goals were attainable, progressively reducing the need for direction. As Hilberg put it in a late interview:

In earlier editions of "Destruction", in fact, Hilberg discussed an "order" given by Hitler to have Jews killed, while more recent editions do not refer to a direct command. Hilberg later commented that he "made this change in the interest of precision about the evidence [...] ." Notwithstanding Hilberg's focus on bureaucratic momentum as an indispensable force behind the Holocaust, he maintained that the large-scale extermination of Jews was one of Hitler's primary aims: "The primary notion in Germany is that Hitler did it. As it happens, this is also my notion, but I'm not wedded to it" (qtd. in Guttenplan, p. 303).

This contradicts the thesis advanced by Daniel Goldhagen (also a functionalist) that the ferocity of German anti-Semitism is sufficient as an explanation for the Holocaust; Hilberg noted that anti-Semitism was more virulent in Eastern Europe than in the Third Reich itself.

Hilberg vehemently criticized Goldhagen's scholarship, which he called poor ("his scholarly standard is at the level of 1946") and he was even harsher concerning the lack of primary source or secondary literature competence at Harvard by those who oversaw the research for Goldhagen's book Hilberg said, "This is the only reason why Goldhagen could obtain a PhD in political science at Harvard. There was nobody on the faculty who could have checked his work." This remark has been echoed by Yehuda Bauer. Conversely, Hilberg was supportive of Norman Finkelstein's incendiary "The Holocaust Industry", which he endorsed "with specific regard" to Finkelstein's work showing that the money claimed to be owed by Swiss banks to Holocaust survivors was greatly exaggerated. [ [http://www.democracynow.org/2007/5/9/it_takes_an_enormous_amount_of] Democracy Now, Interview with Hilberg, May 9, 2007] ]

What is most contentious about Hilberg's work, the controversial implications of which influenced the decision by Israeli authorities to deny him access to the Yad Vashem's archives, was his assessment that elements of Jewish society, such as the "Judenräte" (Jewish Councils), were complicit in the genocide. [ "The Germans controlled the Jewish leadership, and that leadership in turn controlled the Jewish community. This system was foolproof. Truly, the Jewish communal organizations had become a self-destructive machine." Raul Hilberg, "The Destruction of the European Jews," (1961)1973 pp122-125,p.125] ["In Amsterdam as in Warsaw, in Berlin as in Budapest, Jewish officials could be trusted to compile the lists of persons and of their property, to secure money from the deportees to defray the expenses of their deportation and extermination, to keep track of vacated apartments, to supply police forces to help seize Jews and get them on trains, until, as a last gesture, they handed over the assets of the Jewish community in good order for final confiscation." Hannah Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem" (1963) 1964 p.118] and that this was partly rooted in longer-standing attitudes of European Jews, rather than attempts at survival or exploitation. In his own words:

"I had to examine the Jewish tradition of trusting God, princes, laws and contracts [...] Ultimately I had to ponder the Jewish calculation that the persecutor would not destroy what he could economically exploit. It was precisely this Jewish strategy that dictated accommodation and precluded resistance." [Raul Hilberg, "The politics of memory", pp. 126-127).]

The result of his approach, and the sharp criticism it aroused in certain quarters, was that, as he records in the same book:

"It has taken me some time to absorb what I should always have known, that in my whole approach to the study of the destruction of the Jews I was pitting myself against the main current of Jewish thought."

ee also

*Phases of the Holocaust

Bibliography

*"The destruction of the European Jews" (Yale University Press, 2003; originally published in 1961).
*"The Holocaust today" (Syracuse University Press, 1988).
*"Sources of Holocaust research: An analysis" (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2001).
*"The politics of memory: The journey of a Holocaust historian" (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1996).
*"Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish catastrophe, 1933-1945" (Aaron Asher Books, NY, 1992).
*"The Fate of the Jews in the Cities." Reprinted in Betty Rogers Rubenstein (ed.), et al. "What kind of God? : Essays in honor of Richard L. Rubenstein" (University Press of America, 1995).
*"The destruction of the European Jews: precedents." Printed in Bartov, Omer. "Holocaust: Origins, implementation, aftermath" (Routledge, London, 2000).
* Hilberg, Raul (editor). "Documents of destruction: Germany and Jewry, 1933-1945" (Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1971).
* Hilberg, Raul, et al. (editors). "The Warsaw diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom" (Stein & Day, NY, 1979).

Further reading

* Encyclopaedia Judaica article, "Hilberg, Raul".
* Guttenplan, D. D. "The Holocaust on Trial" (Norton, 2002).
* Pacy, James S. and Wertheimer, Alan P. (ed.). "Perspectives on the Holocaust: Essays in honor of Raul Hilberg" (Westview Press, Boulder, 1995).

References

External links

* [http://www.facing.org/facing/fhao2.nsf/scholars/Raul+Hilberg?opendocument Raul Hilberg overview, by Facing History and Ourselves]
* [http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_6.1-2/hilberg.htm Is There a New Anti-Semitism? A Conversation with Raul Hilberg]
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0411/is_n4_v46/ai_20583587 A book review of Raul Hilberg's biography, "The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian", by Berel Lang]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20060107050538/http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=5 Raul Hilberg interview on Finkelstein and Goldhagen]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20050322003253/www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/studies/vol26/abs-hilberg.html Raul Hilberg - "On the Goldhagen Thesis"] , presented by Yad Vashem (יד ושם)
* [http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/09/1514221 "It Takes an Enormous Amount of Courage to Speak the Truth When No One Else is Out There" - World-Renowned Holocaust, Israel Scholars Defend DePaul Professor Norman Finkelstein as He Fights for Tenure] (Raul Hilberg and Avi Shlaim speak in support of Norman Finkelstein's scholarship and "The Holocaust Industry" specifically.)