Hilberg also goes on to claim that Nora Levin heavily borrowed from The Destruction without acknowledgment in her 1968 The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry, and that historian Lucy Davidowicz not only ignored The Destructions findings in her 1975 The War against the Jews, 1933 – 1945 but also went on to exclude mention of him, along with a galaxy of other leading Holocaust scholars, in her 1981 historiographic work, The Holocaust and the Historians.

As early as 1942, Hilberg, after reading scattered reports of the Nazi genocide, went so far as to ring Stephen Wise and ask him what he planned to do with regard to ' the complete annihilation of European Jewry '.

Hilberg notes that Dawidowicz not only ignored The Destructions findings in The War Against the Jews, but also went on to exclude mention of him in her 1981 historiographic work, The Holocaust and the Historians.

In addition to prominent supporters, such as Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn, the Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg is on record as praising Finkelstein's book:

In his autobiography, Hilberg reveals learning that Hannah Arendt advised Princeton University Press against publishing The Destruction on the grounds that it was not a sufficiently important contribution to the subject.

Thus over a period of centuries the Jews had learned that in order to survive they had to restrain from resistance ..." Yad Vashem's scholars, including Josef Melkman and Nathan Eck, did not feel that Hilberg's characterizations of Jewish history were correct, but they also felt that by using Jewish history to explain the reaction of the Jewish community to the Holocaust, Hilberg was suggesting that some responsibility for the extent of the destruction fell on the Jews themselves, a position that they found unacceptable.

" He goes on to echo the early critics of ( the no longer marginalized ) Hilberg, stating that: " it is about time to publish researched testimonies of the victims and survivors opposed to those documentations and books, based solely on German documents.

While firmly intentionalist, unlike many intentionalists and functionalists alike, The Destruction does not emphasize and focus on the role of Hitler, though on this, Hilberg has shifted more towards the centre, with the third edition pointing at a less direct and systemic, more erratic and sporadic, but nonetheless pivotal, involvement by Hitler in his support for the destruction process.

Reviewing the book just after publication, Guggenheim Fellow Andreas Dorpalen wrote that Hilberg had " covered his topic with such thoroughness that his book will long remain a basic source of information on this tragic subject.

) Perspectives on the Holocaust: Essays in honor of Raul Hilberg ( Westview Press, Boulder, 1995 ).

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.

" Hilberg was amazed by this highly educated, German-Jewish emigrant passing over the genocide of European Jews in order to expound on Napoleon and the occupation of Spain.

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.

Neumann was initially reluctant to take Hilberg on as his doctoral student.

Undeterred by the prospect, Hilberg pressed on without regard for the possible consequences.

Hilberg was appointed to the President's Commission on the Holocaust by Jimmy Carter in 1979.

Hilberg was the only scholar interviewed for Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, and according to Guy Austin was " a key influence on Lanzmann " in depicting the logistics of the genocide.

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

Hilberg, a lifelong Republican voter, 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.

To that end, Hilberg refrained from laying emphasis on the suffering of Jews, the victims, or their lives in the concentration camps.

Hilberg argued that " The reaction pattern of the Jews is characterized by almost complete lack of resistance ... he documentary evidence of Jewish resistance, overt or submerged, is very slight ..." Hilberg attributed this lack of resistance to the Jewish experience as a minority: " In exile, the Jews ... had learned that they could avert danger and survive destruction by placating and appeasing their enemies ...

Hilberg, unwilling to compromise, submitted the complete manuscript to several major publishing houses over the following six years, without luck.

It was also through Shoah that many viewers were first introduced to the work of American Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg.

Thus, an interval passed between the " first sweep " of Einsatzgruppen massacres in summer and fall, and what American historian Raul Hilberg called the " second sweep ", which started in December 1941 and lasted into the summer of 1942.

According to Raul Hilberg, this camp was where " one the first instances that reference was made to the ' soap-making rumor '.

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.

Hilberg obtained his first academic position at the University of Vermont in Burlington, in 1955, and took up residence there in January 1956.

Hilberg had two children, David and Deborah, by his first wife, Christine Hemenway.

*" 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.

Raul Hilberg gave a figure of 550, 000.

Lanzmann also interviews Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, who discusses the historical significance of Nazi propaganda against the European Jews and the Nazi invention of the Final Solution.

In 1961, Raul Hilberg estimated the number of the Jewish victims at 50, 000, though at the time other sources, including the camp museum, officially estimated 100, 000 Jewish victims and up to 200, 000 non-Jews killed.

* Raul Hilberg, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom, Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1999, ISBN 1-56663-230-7.

In The Destruction of the European Jews, Raul Hilberg writes, " There were ... instances when the Germans actually had to step in to restrain and slow down the pace of the Romanian measures.

* Hilberg, Raul.

Hilberg summarised the debates, " by the end of 1996, it was clear that in sharp distinction from lay readers, much of the academic world had wiped Goldhagen off the map.

Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen and the SS killed more than 1. 3 million Jews, Gypsies, and Soviet political commissars in open-air shootings.

* Raul Hilberg.

The Destruction of the European Jews is a book published in 1961 by historian Raul Hilberg.

Hilberg revised his work in 1985, and it appeared in a new three-volume edition.

Discussing the writing of Destruction in his autobiography, Hilberg wrote: " No literature could serve me as an example.

Hilberg began his study of the Holocaust leading to The Destruction while stationed in Munich in 1948 for the U. S. Army's War Documentation Project.

In fact, David Cesarani writes that Hilberg ' defended several arguments at a bitter debate organised by Dissent magazine which drew an audience of hundreds.

" She wanted preeminence ," Hilberg writes.