We live in a post Holocaust world, this is the conclusion as well as declaration of this article i read few weeks ago:

i hope you don't mind i took the liberty to post a short summery of this, as i found it relevant to the question you've posed:

Psychoanalysis After Auschwitz?: The "Deported Knowledge" of Anne-Lise Stern
Review of Anne-Lise Stern, Le Savoir deporte: camps, histoire, psychanalyse, edited by Nadine Fresco and Martine Leibovici (Paris: Seuil, Librairie du XXIe siecle, 2004)

Michael Dorland

The Holocaust happened. Historian Istvan Deak, for instance, claimed in 1989 that the Holocaust has been probably the most studied event in history. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben, for another, stated "the problem of the historical, technical, bureaucratic and legal circumstances in which the extermination of the Jews took place has been sufficiently clarified" (11). Remarks such as these are, among other things, what gives rise to the present book.

Le Savoir deporte represents the struggle in article form to resoundingly argue the contrary that Parisian psychoanalyst and former Auschwitz and Buchenwald deportee Anne-Lise Stern has waged on the public scene for the past thirty years. Precisely, that the major problem both of contemporary public life and of psychoanalysis is that the Holocaust has not been understood?and thus, remains an omnipresent dimension for understanding what goes on in the Middle East today, the West's complex relations to the Islamic world, and the on-going "wars on terrorism"? to mention only the more visible symptoms that deeply affect public and private lives, now some three generations after the fact.

the key question is less how such a catastrophe could have taken place in "Western civilization," but rather the more difficult issue of how to come to terms with the fact that, nonetheless, it did happen?how to assess its sheer facticity without recourse to the denial which has arguably been the most widely practiced response to the event. Denial aside, the fact the Holocaust happened precipitated a new level of toleration for what would be termed "genocide." Within a mere six months of the discovery of the Nazi concentration camps, the only two atomic bombs ever used on human beings were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The acceptable scale of the violent destruction of peoples has spiraled upwards ever since, showing few signs of abating?just pick the genocide of your choice from the available menu.

to the Full review:
http://www.othervoices.org/2.3/mdorland/index.html

you mind find this interesting:

Psychoanalysis After Auschwitz?: The "Deported Knowledge" of Anne-Lise Stern
Review of Anne-Lise Stern, Le Savoir deporte: camps, histoire, psychanalyse, edited by Nadine Fresco and Martine Leibovici (Paris: Seuil, Librairie du XXIe siecle, 2004)

Michael Dorland

The Holocaust happened. Historian Istvan Deak, for instance, claimed in 1989 that the Holocaust has been probably the most studied event in history. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben, for another, stated "the problem of the historical, technical, bureaucratic and legal circumstances in which the extermination of the Jews took place has been sufficiently clarified" (11). Remarks such as these are, among other things, what gives rise to the present book.

Le Savoir deporte represents the struggle in article form to resoundingly argue the contrary that Parisian psychoanalyst and former Auschwitz and Buchenwald deportee Anne-Lise Stern has waged on the public scene for the past thirty years. Precisely, that the major problem both of contemporary public life and of psychoanalysis is that the Holocaust has not been understood?and thus, remains an omnipresent dimension for understanding what goes on in the Middle East today, the West's complex relations to the Islamic world, and the on-going "wars on terrorism"? to mention only the more visible symptoms that deeply affect public and private lives, now some three generations after the fact.

the key question is less how such a catastrophe could have taken place in "Western civilization," but rather the more difficult issue of how to come to terms with the fact that, nonetheless, it did happen?how to assess its sheer facticity without recourse to the denial which has arguably been the most widely practiced response to the event. Denial aside, the fact the Holocaust happened precipitated a new level of toleration for what would be termed "genocide." Within a mere six months of the discovery of the Nazi concentration camps, the only two atomic bombs ever used on human beings were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The acceptable scale of the violent destruction of peoples has spiraled upwards ever since, showing few signs of abating?just pick the genocide of your choice from the available menu.

to the Full review:
http://www.othervoices.org/2.3/mdorland/index.html

On the question of how to prevent another Auschwitz I refer to a quote I read in TIME magazine years ago: "Only careful examination of what went wrong can foster an atmosphere that prevents new monsters from coming to power. Even without specific acts of judicial vengeance the establishing of a moral climate condemning sins of the past is the ultimate deterrent."

The Holocaust is still relevant today because it was the biggest denial of human rights we have ever known.

This comment might be easily misunderstood, but I think that the one-sided emphasis on the horrors of the Holocaust may, perhaps unintentionally, marginalise the topic in the popular imagination and may actually help to recreate a situation where similar abuses reoccur. It may well be important to remember the social context in Nazi Germany that led to the people there being content to have 'undesirables' removed from their communities. To create a Good society, they were content to remove the 'bad'.

I sense a similar kind of uncaring conservatism in Australia today. This might offend some people, but I consider the postcard New-Agey Byron Bay to be sort of like the Nazi ideal. Only smiley happy people here, thank you, and everyone else can be removed and locked out. I think that the new anti-terror laws might be used to remove and contain 'undesirables' - although I don't think that things could get as bad as they did in nazi Germany.

By focusing on the worst of the Holocaust, it could become a detached symbol of evil in the popular imagination, without any understanding about how it arose and the social conditions that led to those horrors.

As an example, we are told now that 'terrorists' are totalitarians [without a state to control and with no chance of coming to power, this might be a difficult claim to sustain] who must not be 'appeased', yet in fighting 'terrorists' many Western nations are abandoning the rule of law and human rights - and torturing people, many of whom have been innocent. There is also a social emphasis on being HAPPY and smiley [and getting rid of anyone who doesn't want to pretend].

We still have free speech, and things have not been locked down - we have not had a Kristalennacht yet. The targets are different. But I am worried by the dynamic driving this whole War-on-Terror and the associated 'values politics' thing. It is hard to imagine things getting as bad as they were with the Holocaust. But perhaps it does not help to point out the black in the brown-washed painting, without also discussing the painting's background colours.

It usually suits the political class to have the Holocaust as a detached symbol of evil. It is a symbol of evil, but the point that I am raising here refers to the word 'detached'. It may be dangerous to view it all out of context. This is a very sensitive subject, and this is probably one aspect of it that people don't want to see, or have raised...