1st Edition
Historical Distance and the Holocaust Interactions Between Historians and Middle-Class Western Europeans in Memory Education
By Thomas Van de Putte
Copyright 2026
180 Pages
1 Color Illustrations
by
Central European University Press
What happens when Holocaust historians leave their academic bubble and start interacting with laypeople? This book investigates practices and discourses of historical distance and their effects on vernacular understandings of the Holocaust among white, middle-class Europeans. In five chapters, Historical Distance and the Holocaust describes and explains how historians, in interactions with... Read more
Acknowledgements
Introduction. Distance and the Holocaust: Four Strategies.
Chapter 1: A Morally Meaningless Holocaus
Chapter 2: Holocaust Memory without Emotions
Chapter 3: Narrating the Holocaust as System: Getting Rid of Actors and Experiences
Chapter 4: Distancing the Holocaust with Sick Humour
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Thomas Van de Putte is assistant professor in Sociology at the University of Trento. He works on questions of collective Holocaust memory, combining perspectives from sociology, linguistics and cultural studies. He published his first monograph, Contemporary Auschwitz/ Oswiecim, in 2021, and his second monograph, Outsourcing the European Past, in 2024.
