Abstract
The series of historiographic turns, theoretic and discursive ruptures which has moulded historiography since the 1970s, has made only a limited impact on Holocaust historiography. A relative enclave of conservative historical practice, Holocaust historiography has been slow to adopt new questions, sources, and perspectives prevalent in historiography at large.
Where it implemented such shifts in perspective, their reception has often been partial or ambivalent. A case in point was the call for a greater inclusion of women's experience during the Holocaust.
Sexuality, forms of material culture, and the inclusion of non-Jewish victims can serve as further examples. The claim is often made, that this conservative stance is necessary as a defensive tactic against Holocaust denial, revisionism and "post-truth," including the recurrent nationalization of the past.
Hence, new historical approaches must be subjected to particular scrutiny before being applied to the Holocaust. In recent years, Holocaust Studies have been even transformed into a field of its own, separate from other disciplines across humanities and social sciences.
The field currently exhibits a marked preference for area studies specialists, working on organizational or local histories. Such highly specialized research, though useful for understanding bureaucratic structures or micro-histories of individual regions and often supported by a strong archival source-base, tends to be read in isolation.
Moreover, it may be severely limited in studying questions which concern the experience of victims, as well as undocumented acts committed in the twilight-zone of war and genocide: during the fog of battle and under occupation, in the contexts of seclusion, ghettoization, forced slave-labour, and extermination. Specialization also gives little space for any comparative work, especially across different timeframes and geographies.
What is the price of ever narrowing specializations, and conformity with written and unwritten rules of historical research? Where have "good scholarly practices", commonly accepted truths and suppositions, led us astray? Which new insights have we gained into the nature of the Holocaust by contravening historical doxa and scholarly norms, or holding them in abeyance? Where have we found it necessary to create new theory and practice to adequately describe a historical reality which would not fit into any pre-conceived model? Alternatively, in the era of "post-truth", which standards should we adopt for gauging historical research on the Holocaust?