The recognition of the pastness of the Holocaust is a novelty in a culture where the presence of the event has been entrenched in the last generation. Recognition of its pastness is not the same as forgetting it, nor is it simply a result of the passing of more than three score years since 1945. Indeed, it is actually partly a result of the very intense public and professional preoccupation with the Holocaust, the cumulative effect of which has been to make the event not only an integral part of German, Jewish, and European history but also a signifying moral event in human history.