I often end up crying during my research. Due to the area I study I focus specifically on the 'lighter' topics within it, and even those can be very distressing. However, I think I'd be extremely worried if it didn't phase me. When you're seeing the personal experience of someone who you have a 'connection' with through their work it's very easy to understand their lives, whereas "40 million" is a number, a horrible number, but less distressing in a lot of ways.

I have definitely shed tears in the past over some particularly harrowing source material. I distinctly remember bawling my eyes out one night over my undergraduate dissertation due to a combination of stress and just how unbelievably horrific some of the things I was reading about were. There have been other times when I've felt a need to put aside something for a little while or call it a day after reading a particular source. You do learn to have a certain level of disconnect though, I think - a measure of desensitisation is inevitable when you have to learn to write and talk about these things in a critical fashion. Certainly though, you would have to be very stony-hearted to never be moved by the kind of things I've encountered.

But I see part of the work of historical inquiry as giving life to the stories of these people that would have otherwise been forgotten; these people were as real as you or I in our quite comfortable lives today, and they suffered in ways we can only begin to imagine. The least they deserve is to have their experiences treated with respect and shared for others to understand. And often, I am just as moved by the stories of people who still tried to make the best of a horrible, horrible situation. There is one particular slave narrative I'm fond of that highlights the equally incredible Human capacity for love and generosity of spirit even when faced with such horrific circumstances as those that existed in the institution of slavery, or apartheid, or indenture, and so on.

I have to say too that I am a quite strongly religious person, and it does help being able to find some comfort in my personal belief that something better awaited all of those souls who did live through these horrendous acts of abuse and degradation.

I have rarely been emotional during Historical research. When I do get emotional it is more as a result of the beauty. I can get frustrated because of sad stories, facts, and other stuff but it is for me quite easy to make an emotional separation when working with it. When watching a movie or reading a Book about the same topic I just researched I often do get emotional. Maybe because my attitude is different at that moment and I let my guard down. I am actually in general quite an emotional person although I dont show it all the time.

An example: I have studied the Nazi concentration camps a lot. Many family members actually died in these camps. When studying them, reading personal stories, you want to do honor to the victims and reproduce the truth in a complete and respectful manner. I mostly do not get emotional during studies because I have a goal and try do it as professional as possible. However, after reading a lot about the horrors in Sobibor I saw the movie Escape From Sobibor with Rutger Hauer in a leading role. When the little boy saw all the Jews going into the gas chambers, tears came into my eyes, while I did not have this during study.

When I was in Auschwitz I did not get emotional because I knew what to expect. Ofc you feel horrible about what happened but you are already reading so much about it, you already know a lot, that it does not necessarily lead to tears in your eyes. This all changed when I entered the Dutch Barack and there was a wall with names of all Dutch victims in Auschwitz. Ofc I looked for my family members, and I found them, at this moment I did get emotional. This if ofc not so strange but I just want to underline it comes at moments when you are not prepared for it. I think many historians do have emotional 'moments' but on a professional level are able to disconnect themselves on an emotional level. You cannot maintain this the whole time, so when you are not prepared for it, it actually can strike you for example during a movie as stated or something different.

I do know that historians who study Genocide Studies often do have hard times. They actually talk with each other and other historians about this problem. Their strategy is to, and this is not a joke, watch every week (maybe even a few times in a week) a Disney movie. This actually helps them a lot.

It is a very Good question thanks for asking this.