A new book of essays revisits Zygmunt Bauman’s controversial 1989 take on the Holocaust. Janet Wolff discusses its importance

It is no exaggeration to say that Modernity and the Holocaust by sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman transformed the way historians have understood that tragic period of the 20th century. Abandoning the perplexed gaze founded on the inability to comprehend how such irrationality could irrupt at the apex of modern science and rational thought, Bauman made the radical claim that the Holocaust was in fact the product of modernity. “The Holocaust was born and executed in our modern rational society,” he writes in the 1989 book, “at the high stage of our civilisation, and at the peak of human cultural achievement, and for this reason it is a problem of that society, civilisation and culture.”

His argument is that the cultural tendencies and technical achievements of modernity were necessary conditions for the emergence of a totalitarian bureaucracy and efficient methods of control, domination and violence. This entirely new (and by no means uncontroversial) analysis of the Nazi machine and its crimes has provoked debate in the years since its appearance.

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the publication of Modernity and the Holocaust, in September 2019, two special events were organised: a two-day symposium hosted by the Bauman Institute at the University of Leeds, where Bauman taught from 1971 until his retirement; and a panel at the 17th Polish Sociological Congress in Wrocław, Poland. The chapters in this new volume, Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust, were almost all presented at one or other of these events. Organised into five thematic sections, the 12 essays engage with, employ and challenge Bauman’s central thesis. For several, the point is to consider the broad claim with more ‘middle-range’ examination – what exactly rationality is and was, how ‘modernity’ differed from the pre-modern, and how bureaucracy operated in Germany and the concentration camps.

Dominic Williams explores Bauman’s brief comments on the links between reason and emotion, in particular in the case of the Jewish Councils and Sonderkommando (special work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners) in the ghettos and camps. Two essays consider parallel issues and analyses in the cases of Bosnia (by Arne Johan Vetlesen) and Rwanda (Jack Palmer), taking the opportunity to assess Bauman’s arguments more generally. A fascinating contribution from Paweł Michna looks at visual representations of modernity in documents from the Łodź Ghetto, while two concluding essays consider the legacies of the book.

Central to the this new volume is recognition of the importance of Janina Bauman, his wife from 1948 until her death in 2009. Winter in the Morning, the 1986 memoir of her life in the Warsaw Ghetto, transformed his understanding of the Holocaust and, in many ways, inspired Modernity and the Holocaust.

Essays by Lydia Bauman, Izabela Wagner and Griselda Pollock discuss Janina’s work and the complex relationship between both writers’ work. Wagner in particular demonstrates the vital influence of Janina’s book by quoting from Bauman’s 1990 Amalfi Prize speech: “This book would never have come to be if not for my life-long friend and companion Janina, whose Winter in the Morning, a book of reminiscences from the years of human infamy, opened my eyes to what we normally refuse to look upon. The writing of Modernity and the Holocaust became an intellectual compulsion and moral duty once I had read Janina’s summary of the sad wisdom she acquired in the inner circle of the man-made inferno.”

Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust is an essential and timely contribution both to contemporary debates and to the understanding of the development of Bauman’s thinking. Now, five years after his death, and in a context where there is growing critical appraisal of his work (as well as recent antisemitic attacks against him in Poland) these essays offer new and fascinating ways to look back at a key moment in Bauman’s intellectual trajectory.

By Janet Wolff

Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust: Heritage, Dilemmas, Extensions, edited by Jack Palmer and Dariusz Brzeziński (Routledge, 2022) is out now.

Janet Wolff is Professor Emerita in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester. She is the author of several books on the sociology of art and, most recently, of the memoir Austerity Baby. She is co-editor, with Peter Beilharz, of The Photographs of Zygmunt Bauman (forthcoming, Manchester University Press).