Dr. Raul Hilberg, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont and one of the world's foremost Holocaust scholars, died Saturday, August 4, 2007, at the Vermont Respite House with his wife Gwen by his side. He was 81. The family said the cause of death was a recurrence of lung cancer, which Hilberg battled despite the fact he had never been a smoker.

A faculty member at UVM from 1956 to 1991, Hilberg was the author of The Destruction of the European Jews, (1961), which meticulously documents the Nazi killings of more than 5 million Jews and is regarded by Holocaust scholars as a masterwork in the field. The University established its Center for Holocaust Studies in 1992 to honor 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."

Hilberg was twice honored by the German government for his contributions to scholarship and teaching on the Holocaust and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. Membership in the academy is one of the nation’s most prestigious intellectual honors, reserved for leading scientists, scholars, artists, business people and public leaders.

The University of Vermont also bestowed upon Hilberg some of its highest honors, naming him a University Scholar in 1988-89 and recipient of the George V. Kidder outstanding faculty award in 1988.

Hilberg and his parents were forced to leave their native Austria following the Nazi invasion in 1938. His father was jailed and later released on condition that he leave the country. The family emigrated to Cuba and gained entrance to the United States in 1939. Hilberg served with the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II and took part in the last American campaign on German soil. As a member of the War Documentation Project sifting through captured German documents in the war's aftermath, he discovered Hitler’s private library packed away in crates and stored in Munich. It was this experience that inspired him to begin an investigation of all historical records that might shed light on the political and bureaucratic structures by which Hitler and his followers carried out 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 once said.

Hilberg earned his B.A. degree from Brooklyn College in 1948 and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1950 and 1955. He came to the University of Vermont in 1956 and received tenure in 1960, the year before his classic work was published. He retired from teaching in 1991 but maintained close ties to the university as professor emeritus.

In addition to The Destruction of the European Jews, published in 1961 and revised in 1985 and 2003, Hilberg's books include Perpetrators Victims Bystanders (1992); The Politics of Memory (1996); and Sources of Holocaust Research (2001).

He was a member of the President's Commission on the Holocaust (1978-79), and the United States Holocaust Memorial Council (1980-88).