[...] According to this view, the Holocaust was not a mere accident of history that defies reasonable explanation, but it was and is substantially anchored in the specific cosmology of Western civilization as an ever-possible event, a civilization that, as I said, is essentially characterized by scientific rationality and technological efficiency.
The Holocaust appears in it as a form of Genocide that does not occur in other civilizations. As a possibility that can become virulent at any time, if circumstances permit, it is structurally inherent in Western civilization, to put it in sociological diction and with a view to Max Weber's ideal type. By analyzing it, conclusions can be drawn about the socio-historical conditions that must be present in order to turn a virtual event into a real one.
Zygmunt Bauman writes that the Holocaust exposed features of our society that could hardly have been observed and empirically proven under "non-experimental" conditions. Through him, we can gain an insight into the usually ignored "different aspects" of those social principles that are embedded in the development of modernity, as he calls it. The Holocaust, which has now become the subject of serious historical research, should be seen as a unique but significant and reliable test of the latent potential of modern society, and the historical perspective should be supplemented by the sociological view. It allows the Holocaust to be analyzed as a sociological "experimental setup" (1992, p. 25). It need not be explicitly emphasized at this point that both his biography and his writings absolve Zygmunt Bauman of any suspicion of cynicism in this context, that this is not about moral outrage, but about sociological analysis. The investigation of Guilt is one thing, research into the causes is another. The former is all too often confused with the latter.
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r.Homo.Bammé, p. 426
BAMMÉ, Arno, 2011. Homo occidentalis: von der Anschauung zur Bemächtigung der Welt: Zäsuren abendländischer Epistemologie. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft. ISBN 978-3-942393-03-4. archive 
[…] Dieser Sichtweise zufolge war der Holocaust kein bloßer Unglücksfall der Geschichte, der sich vernünftiger Erklärung entzieht, sondern er war und er ist als immer wieder mögliches Ereignis in der spezifischen Kosmologie der abendländischen Zivilisation substantiell verankert, eine Zivilisation, die, wie gesagt, wesentlich durch wissenschaftliche Rationalität und technologische Effizienz geprägt ist.