Vergangenheitsbewältigung describes the attempt to analyze, digest and learn to live with the past, in particular the Holocaust. The focus on learning is much in the spirit of philosopher George Santayana's oft-quoted observation that "those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it". It is a technical term also used in English that was coined after 1945 in West Germany, relating specifically to the atrocities committed during the Third Reich, when Adolf Hitler was in power in Germany, and to both historical and contemporary concerns about the extensive compromise and co-optation of many German cultural, religious, and political institutions by Nazism.