West German Chancellor Willy Brandt Kneels in Front of the Jewish Heroes Monument Paying Tribute to Jews Killed by the Nazis during the 1943 Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, December 7, 1970

Photographer Unknown

1970

Photograph of a man in a long coat kneeling in front of a memorial wreath on a pedestal as crowd watches and photographers take photos.
German Chancellor Willie Brandt went down on his knees at the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on a trip to Poland. He was there to sign the Treaty of Warsaw, a key element of his “Ostpolitik,” which aimed to improve Germany’s relations with Eastern Europe. His gesture of atonement for the genocide perpetrated by Germans against Jews did not go down well with everyone back home in Germany; interest in taking collective responsibility for Germany’s Nazi past was not yet as widespread as it became in ensuing decades.

Credits

Bettmann / Getty Images.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

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