The sociological perspective has a different focus. It is not so much about the historical uniqueness of the monstrous event, but about the socio-historical structure that produced such a monstrosity, made it everyday normality, and made a repetition, though not in this uniquely concrete form, appear entirely within the realm of possibility, a structure that, to use the words of "insightful reason," makes both "Good" and "Evil" possible.
According to this view, the Holocaust was not a mere accident of history that defies reasonable explanation, but was and is essentially anchored as an always-possible Event in the specific cosmology of Western civilization, a civilization that, as mentioned, is essentially characterized by scientific rationality and technological efficiency.
The Holocaust appears 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 use sociological terms and with an eye to Max Weber. From his analysis we can draw conclusions about the socio-historical conditions that must be present for a virtual event to become a real one.
Zygmunt Bauman writes that the Holocaust revealed characteristics of our society that would have been difficult to observe and prove empirically under "non-experimental" conditions. Through it, we can gain insight into the usually ignored "other aspects" of those social principles that are embedded in the development of what he calls modernity. 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 complemented by the sociological view. It allows the Holocaust to be analyzed as a sociological "experimental set-up" (1992, p. 25).
It need not be explicitly emphasized at this point that both his CV and his writings absolve Zygmunt Bauman from the suspicion of cynicism in this context, that it is not a matter of Moral outrage but of Sociological Analysis. Investigating guilt is one thing, researching the causes is another. The former is all too often confused with the latter.
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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 
=> Sociological Analysis (within r.Homo.Bammé)