Around 1960 the Holocaust and the crimes of the Germans in the Second World War became the focus of public debate in the Federal Republic of Germany. They overshadowed the self-image of the Germans as victims of war and expulsion, which had been common until then.
Reconciliation initiatives such as the "Ostdenkschrift" (Eastern Memorandum) of the Protestant Church of Germany, published in 1965, and the pastoral letter of the Polish bishops were indications of emerging socio-political change. It paved the way for the Eastern Policy, which under chancellor Willy Brandt had been geared towards understanding since 1969.
In the Eastern Treaties concluded by the Federal Republic between 1970 and 1973 with the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the GDR, the interest groups of the displaced people saw, contrary to a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, a surrender of the German Eastern Territories. By insisting on the right to a homeland in the east, they became more and more socially marginalised in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Illustrations:
1.) The monument erected in 2005 on the sand island in Wrocław (formerly Breslau) depicts Cardinal Bolesław Kominek. In 1965 he compiled the letter of the Polish bishops to their German counterparts, whose in communist times courageous core statement "We grant forgiveness and ask for forgiveness" became a key moment of German-Polish relations.
Herder Institute Marburg, Photo: Wolfgang Schekanski
2.) Willy Brandt’s genuflection in Warsaw 1970
An important gesture for the rapprochement policy was the genuflection of Chancellor Willy Brandt in front of the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the Polish capital in 1970.
Photo: Bpk