Historical Distance and the Holocaust.

Chair: Giorgia Proietti (University of Trento)
Discussants: 

• Daniele Salerno (University of Sevilla),
• Jeremy Yamashiro (University of California Santa Cruz),
• Guido Bartolini (Free University of Bolzano),
• Hannes Obermair (EURAC Bolzano)

The Interdepartmental Laboratory Memory and Society (LIMS) at the University of Trento, invites colleagues to the book launch of Thomas Van de Putte’s new monograph Historical Distance and the Holocaust: Interactions between Historians and Middle Class Western Europeans in Memory Education. The event will be held at the University of Trento and online on September 4, 2026, 6-7:30 pm CET.

What happens when academic Holocaust historians leave their academic bubble and start interacting with laypeople? Historical Distance and the Holocaust 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 laypeople, strip the Holocaust of its moral meaning and emotional load, narrate it as a ‘system’, and use sick Holocaust humour as distancing strategy. A detailed interactional analysis and thick ethnographic description demonstrate how the temporal, moral and emotional distancing practices reenforce the lay moralities and political subjectivities of the white middle-class.
This comes with (mostly unintended) consequences. Distanced approaches to the Holocaust in non-academic environments reduce empathy for victims and survivors, depersonalize violence, disconnect the meaning of the Holocaust from contemporary conflict, and re-activate stereotypes about groups who employ more ‘close’ approaches to the Holocaust.
During the event, Guido Bartolini (Free University of Bolzano), Hannes Obermaier (EURAC Bolzano), Daniele Salerno (University of Sevilla), and Jeremy Yamashiro (University of California Santa Cruz) will provide their short comments on the book, followed by a debate. The event will be chaired and moderated by Giorgia Proietti (University of Trento).