List of Famous people who died at 81

Velasio de Paolis, C.S., JCD, STL, was an Italian member of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo (Scalabrinians) and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was President of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See and Pontifical Delegate for the religious institute of the Legionaries of Christ.

Engelbert Siebler was a German Roman Catholic bishop.

Elżbieta Maria Krzesińska was a track and field athlete from Poland, who competed in the long jump. Born in Warsaw, she competed for her native country at the 1956 Summer Olympics held in Melbourne, Australia where she won the gold medal in the Women's Long Jump. She returned to the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome but failed to defend her title, finishing second behind Soviet Vera Krepkina.

Feriha Tevfik Dağ was a Turkish beauty pageant contestant and actress. She is best known for being the first Miss Turkey (1929). She participated again in the pageant in 1932 and finished second after Keriman Halis.

Zouheïra Salem was a Tunisian singer. She was part of the same generation of singers as Naâma, Oulaya, and Safia Chamia. Her most famous song, Baja bled el mandara wa sabba, was a tribute to her hometown of Béja. She died on 27 December 2020 in Tunis.

Bernardino Lombao Sotuela was a Spanish athlete, businessman, television presenter and sports coach.

Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born Jewish-American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the preeminent scholar on the Holocaust. Christopher R. Browning has called him the founding father of Holocaust Studies and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus The Destruction of the European Jews is regarded as seminal for research into the Nazi Final Solution.

Samson Iosifovich Samsonov was a Soviet and Russian film director and screenwriter, he was granted the honorary title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1991.

Adnan Buyung Nasution, also known as Adnan Bahrum Nasution was an Indonesian lawyer, advocate, and activist in Indonesia.

Nikolai Semyonovich Patolichev was Minister of Foreign Trade of the USSR from 1958 to 1985. Prior to that, he was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia from 1950 to 1956.