WILLISTON, Vt. -- Dr. Raul Hilberg, a world-renowned Holocaust scholar, has died. He was 81.
Dr. Hilberg, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont, died Saturday from a recurrence of lung cancer, although he never smoked, said his wife, Gwen. He died with her at his side at the Vermont Respite House in Williston.
Dr. Hilberg was the author of "The Destruction of the European Jews" (1961), a landmark study of the Nazi killings of more than 5 million Jews.
He was honored by the German government for his contributions and teaching on the Holocaust and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, according to UVM.
Dr. Hilberg, who taught at UVM from 1956 to 1991, started the school's Holocaust Studies program. UVM created the Center for Holocaust Studies in 1992 to honor Dr. Hilberg's teaching and research accomplishments.
"For more than three decades Raul Hilberg taught and conducted research at UVM with an authority and passion that made an indelible impression on his colleagues and the thousands of UVM students who enrolled in his classes," said UVM president Daniel Mark Fogel.
"The entire university community is saddened by the loss of this great scholar, but comforted in the legacy of writing and research he leaves for those who seek to understand one of the darkest, defining chapters in human history."
Dr. Hilberg and his parents left Austria in 1938 after the Nazi invasion and immigrated to the United States, where Dr. Hilberg served in the US Army in Europe during World War II.
As a member of the War Documentation Project, he found the private library of Adolf Hitler in crates stored in Munich, UVM said.
That prompted him to start investigating the Holocaust.
"Once the Nuremberg Trials were over and a few people judged guilty, no one wanted to talk about it. But I was driven by a desire to know what happened," he had said.
He received a bachelor of arts degree from Brooklyn College in 1948 and a master's and doctorate from Columbia University in 1950 and 1955.
Dr. Hilberg also was author of "Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders" (1992); "The Politics of Memory" (1996); and "Sources of Holocaust Research" (2001).
