Warsaw Kneel
German Chancellor Willie Brandt went down on his knees (the Warschauer Kniefall, or Warsaw kneel) 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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