On the Passing of Holocaust Historian Raul Hilberg

Steven Plaut blogs:

Hilberg in recent years had become an apologist and lobbyist on behalf of Neo-Nazi pseudo-scholar Norman Finkelstein, and had repeatedly endorsed Finkelstein’s hate-filled "books" and rants against Jews and Israel. Hilberg had been trying to help Finkelstein get tenured at DePaul University. Hilberg had also been increasingly mouthing anti-Israel rhetoric in recent years.

Why would the "Dean of Holocaust Studies" go out streetwalking for Norman Finkelstein? Part of the story may have been that he was far more upset that the "Jewish Establishment" did not give him the respect he thought he deserved. Alan Dershowitz suggested to me a more plausible explanation though. Hilberg in recent years was obsessed with engaging in a personal vendetta against Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, a prominent historian of German and of anti-Semitism. Hilberg evidently thought Goldhagen was stealing Hilberg’s own thunder. He attacked Goldhagen endlessly and viciously, in an ad hominem way.

Because Norman Finkelstein also attacked Goldhagen, Hilberg decided to endorse the Fink, in his own Vermont application of the Middle East’s slogan holding that the enemy of my enemy being my friend. Hilberg in his last years seemed to have been far more angry at the "Jewish Establishment" than he was at Neo-Nazis and anti-Semites.