Tal Bruttmann repeats it in every conversation: He is not interesting. In fact, he claims he only ever says nonsense. "Honestly, you should just give up on this profile," he insisted during a first meeting in Paris in April. Yet he is recognized as one of France's leading experts on the Holocaust.

For the 80^th anniversary of the discovery of Auschwitz, in January 2025, he was invited to speak by many media outlets, dressed in his usual outfit – jeans, a Fred Perry polo shirt and Puma sneakers – like a friend who had slipped out of a bar to come and talk about the Final Solution, Auschwitz, and antisemitism in France, his three areas of expertise.

If he is far from the polished image one might have of an academic, it is because he is not one. Bruttmann is a historian like no other. He did not finish his doctoral thesis, a requirement for securing a university position. "University pisses me off." What exactly about it? "Everything." The 53-year-old from southeastern Grenoble has built a life as an independent researcher, collaborating with museums, training high school teachers in the history of the Holocaust, giving lectures around the world and writing a dozen books.

His last book, Un album d'Auschwitz ("An Auschwitz Album"), co-written with Germans Christoph Kreutzmüller and Stefan Hördler, was, in his own words, "a colossal success." He admitted as much before analyzing it, always careful to display humility alongside confidence, describing it as "a stroke of luck that will never happen again." It is indeed a bestseller for a work of humanities, having sold 15,000 copies. The book was the subject of an exhibition at the Shoah Memorial in Paris in January.

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