Willy Brandt in front of the Holocaust memorial in Warsaw

On 7 December 1970, while he was in Warsaw to sign a treaty, German Chancellor Willy Brandt fell on his knees in front of the Holocaust Memorial.

His gesture, deemed to be "little patriotic" by many Germans but spontaneous and heartfelt, moved the world. It was the first time that Germany recognized its historical guilt towards Jews and Eastern Europeans. In 1971 the Oslo Commission assigned Brandt the Peace Nobel Prize.

Brandt was a member of the socialist opposition to nazism. Expelled and deprived of his citizenship by Hitler he lived undercover in Norway during World War II. Miraculously escaping a Nazi raid as he wore a Norwegian uniform, after the war he settled first in Sweden and then back to Germany where he was Berlin's mayor before becoming the Chancellor.