Robert L. Hilliard (born June 25, 1925, New York City) is an American World War II veteran, activist, and academic of communication studies.
Having received instruction in morse code and radio operation, he was responsible for serving in an advanced unit that would inform American command of the location of the enemy.
He was soon wounded by mortar fire, and later served during the bloody combat that took place at the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest in December 1944.
[3] Hoping only to research a good story for a serviceman's newspaper he founded to provide news for allied troops, in May, 1945, he drove a jeep for miles to attend a concert put on by the newly liberated concentration camp survivors at the hospital at St. Ottillien.
He found himself driven to tears by the emaciated and sick survivors of Buchenwald and Dachau, still on stretchers, without food, and wearing the cold, threadbare and inadequate striped uniforms they had formerly been issued as camp inmates.
German citizens and American officers judged Hilliard and his compatriots for buying food on the black market, despite their having few, if any other sources.
[4][1][4][5] Risking a court martial, and acting against the stated military policy of refraining from political activities while in the service, Hilliard and a few compatriots wrote and printed hundreds of letters which they hoped would be read by American citizens, and Congressmen informing them of the absence of food, medicine, and clothing available to the surviving concentration camp survivors.
[4][1] Despite the urgency of the situation, Truman remained skeptical and did not take immediate action pending a thorough investigation of Hilliard and the claims made in the letters, and referred to an advisor, Earl G. Harrison, a lawyer, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the former U.S. Immigration Commissioner under Franklin Roosevelt.
About the time Truman received his letter from Hilliard, Harrison had just returned from a tour of Europe where he had been sent to investigate the plight of the displaced refugees and the remaining Jews.
Hilliard, with good reason, took the advice primarily as a threat, rather than a promise to help Holocaust survivors which would require a complete reversal of a few American policies regarding the displaced person camps.
[9] Hilliard and Herman also helped to change the policies restricting displaced persons from voluntarily leaving the camps, or being required to return to the countries in which they had formerly resided, where they had no homes, food, property, or the prospect of obtaining employment.
An American military guard shot an "inmate" of St. Ottilien trying to return to the camp after searching for food in a nearby village.
He taught a class at Emerson known as "hate.com", which examined how hate groups target impressionable youth through websites, how they grow, and how they spread rage.
Hilliard observed that hate groups on websites build interest slowly with rock music and games, and initially avoid inflammatory rhetoric and epithets.
[14] While with the U.S. military, Hilliard's decorations included but were not limited to the Purple Heart, Combat Infantry Badge, and Commendation Ribbon.