[11] In the 1980s and 1990s, a set of scholars, including Emil Fackenheim, Lucy Dawidowicz, Saul Friedländer, Yehuda Bauer, Steven Katz, Deborah Lipstadt, and Daniel Goldhagen—mostly from the field of Jewish studies—authored various studies to prove the Holocaust's uniqueness.
[13] Around the turn of the twenty-first century, polemical approaches for the debate were exchanged for analytical ones relating to claims of uniqueness in Holocaust memory.
[15] Unlike most Orthodox Jewish rabbis and theologians, the Lubavitcher Rebbe eventually came to the conclusion that the Holocaust was historically and theologically unprecedented and could not be understood with older religious categories such as sin, punishment, or Tikkun.
[26] On the other hand, historian Annette F. Timm argues that the Holocaust was unique due to the categorical rejection of any single Jewish person from being assimilated.
[29] Some observers claim that the Holocaust was influenced by the earlier Herero and Nama genocide in German South West Africa, while others reject the comparison.
[32] Christian Gerlach argues that putting the Holocaust above other atrocities involves "constantly devaluing and demoting all other victim groups", which he calls racist.