Raul Hilberg (1926–2007) In Memoriam

• Published in: The Jewish quarterly review Vol. 100; no. 4; pp. 661 - 688
• Main Author: BUSH, JONATHAN A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 01.10.2010
• Subjects: Careers; Essays; European history; Evidence; German language; Hebrew language; Historiography; Holocaust; Jewish people; Literary translation; NECROLOGIES; Political science; Studies; Teachers; New York; United States > US
• ISSN: 0021-6682; 1553-0604; 1553-0604
• DOI: 10.1353/jqr.2010.a404350

The volume confirmed a somewhat greater receptivity to victim-generated sources and even oral history and was a perfect recessional for a scholar who had focused for a half century on evidence rather than flashy conclusions.111 Two years later, Yale University Press published the third edition of Destruction, incorporating archival findings of the previous twenty years, adhering to a more diplomatically phrased but largely unchanged view of Jewish leadership and resistance,112 and citing, for the first time, other genocides with features of the Holocaust.113 He published an assessment of and tribute to his first mentor, Neumann.114 Hilberg's career had come full circle, rarely ranging far from documents as Neumann had directed and using a sturdy model derived from his teacher to view them. In 2004 he delivered closing remarks at a Yad Vashem conference where he restated his vision of the destruction process, his deemphasis on resistance, his debt to Neumann and others (including Poliakov and Neumann's law partner Ernst Fraenkel), and his view of the historiography; showing the generosity that some deny in him, his speech praised a half dozen scholars.115 He reviewed yet another book, honoring the author with the same attention to detail that he had shown so many others and wrote a foreward to a jewel of a book by a German scholar he long admired.116 Finally, Yad Vashem announced a belated Hebrew edition of Destruction, and Hilberg fussed over the translation of a new German edition, neither of which has appeared to date.