June 2, 1926 is the birthdate of the Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, who spent his life and career on the margins and apparently felt comfortable there.
Hilberg was one of the first scholars to devote himself to studying the bureaucracy of the Nazis’ killing machine — the tens of thousands of clerks and petty officials who, in carrying out their individual tasks, were doing their part to annihilate Jews and others without ever having to directly confront the full implication of their actions.
Hilberg understood that Adolf Hitler genuinely intended to eliminate the Jews, but also believed the Holocaust was only made possible by a complex bureaucracy that allowed every person involved in it to deny complicity.
Barely escaped the net
Hilberg only barely avoided becoming a victim himself. He was born in Vienna to Gisela and Michael Hilberg. The family was traditional in its Jewish observance, and although Raul attended a Zionist-oriented school he became an atheist at an early age.
Shortly after the Anschluss, Germany’s annexation of Austria in March 1938, the Hilbergs were evicted from their Vienna home and Michael Hilberg was detained briefly.
Within a year, the family fled Austria, first to France and then to Cuba, reaching New York on September 1, 1939, considered the first day of World War II in Europe. Many members of the extended family died in the Holocaust.
After Raul graduated from Brooklyn’s Abraham Lincoln High School he enrolled at Brooklyn College, studying chemistry. He dropped out and took a factory job before being drafted after the United States entered the war.
Initially assigned to an infantry division, once Hilberg’s language skills were identified he was transferred to the War Documentation Department, where he was exposed to German archives that came into Allied hands as the war progressed.