During his visit to Warsaw on December 7, 1970, Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt at the “Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto”. This gesture of humility by the German head of government became a symbol of his new Ostpolitik.
Large parts of the conservative political camp in the Federal Republic reacted with sharp criticism, they spoke of “submission”. Because from their point of view, the SPD politician gave up all those claims that were further cultivated by the associations of expellees. In addition, that was the real purpose of the Chancellor’s trip to Poland, the treaty “on the basis of the normalization of their mutual relations” was signed in Warsaw between the Federal Republic and Poland. In it, the German side recognized the Oder-Neisse line as Poland’s western border.
In Poland, as well as in the entire Eastern Bloc, Brandt’s knee fell, however, received high recognition. In fact, he laid the foundations for an increasingly trusting collaboration, which in the following years noticeably improved the relationship between the two power blocs of the Cold War. The climax of this development was the agreement on the final act of the “Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe” (CSCE) in Helsinki in 1975. East and West committed themselves to common values, including respect for human rights. Brandt’s successor Helmut Schmidt signed the pioneering contract for the German side.
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