On December 7, 1970 the then German Chancellor Willy Brandt fell to his knees at the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto.
On December 7 last year on the 50th anniversary of what happened at the Warsaw Ghetto memorial, German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas said of the famous event in Warsaw:
"Brandt’s falling to his knees was an admission of German guilt – for the crimes of the Holocaust and the war of annihilation against Poland. The Chancellor bowed before Polish suffering and before the courage of the Jews who dared to revolt against the German occupiers in the ghetto uprising of 1943. Back at home, many accused him of exaggeration or even treason. The erstwhile exile bore no personal guilt. The Chancellor knelt, although he did not need to. He knelt for those who needed – but were unwilling – to kneel.
"In 1970, Brandt signed the Treaty of Warsaw in the Polish capital – a turning point in German-Polish relations with the recognition of the Oder-Neisse border. The Nazis had unleashed their racial-ideological war of annihilation against Poland in 1939. Brandt’s falling to his knees at the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto therefore acknowledged all Polish victims of the war – including the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. That is why it is so important that the German Bundestag finally decided to commemorate the Polish and all other Eastern European victims of the war of annihilation with dignified memorials in Germany in the future."
Not for a moment can what happened in Ireland be remotely compared to what Nazi Germany did, nevertheless, some profound, public act of apology from a Catholic Church leader might prove a moment of reconciliation.
Yesterday Archbishop Eamon Martin was interviewed on RTE Radio 1's lunchtime news. While making a number of worthwhile points it was a weak interview in the context of all that has been said and written during the past week.
The Archbishop-elect of Dublin, Dermot Farrell in a sermon in St Mary's Cathedral, Kilkenny yesterday also spoke of how children and unmarried mothers were treated. Again he admitted to the wrong-doing, but there was no one sentence in his sermon that would catch the moment.
The Irish Catholic Church needs a Willy Brandt gesture, a Willy Brandt moment. Who is going to deliver it?
2 comments:
Could your own words apply to the “Irish Catholic Church” as much as to government where you write:
“... the next time you are tempted to criticise the Government it might do no harm at all to think of the difficult job they have. And especially in these uncharted waters, which appears in no text books, Government is constantly having to maker choices. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.”
Yes.
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