December 5th, 2010
Press Release

Willy Brandt: IAC unveils temporary memorial plaque

At 1 p.m. on Sunday 5 December, at the southern end of the Holocaust Memorial on Hannah-Arendt/ Ebertstrasse, the International Auschwitz Committee unveiled a temporary memorial plaque. It commemorates the occasion when Willy Brandt spontaneously kneeled in front of the Ghetto Memorial in Warsaw on 7 December 1970, forty years ago. On that day, Brandt asked the victims of the Holocaust for forgiveness and moved the world.

The memorial plaque can be viewed until 7 December.

In remembering Willy Brandt’s gesture, we are expressing a sign of honour and thanks to him:
We are remembering Willy Brandt’s gesture as the symbolic expression of a ‘different’ Germany, and as the visible beginning of a ‘new Ostpolitik’, to which all democratic parties in Germany are committed today. But we are also recalling how controversial his gesture was considered at that time, forty years ago in Germany, and how fiercely disputed the ‘new Ostpolitik’ was in German society. We are remembering Willy Brandt’s gesture, because it symbolises new paths and new beginnings in neighbourly German-Polish relations, which it also enabled to become reality.

His gesture stands as a great expression of dignity and patriotism, and as a great image in modern history.

Christoph Heubner
Executive Vice President
International Auschwitz Committee

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