On December 7, 1970, the then Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany spontaneously knelt in front of the monument to thousands of Jews – victims of the Nazi pogrom in the Warsaw ghetto. On this day, December 7, 1970, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, during an official visit to Poland, unexpectedly bowed, kneeling, in front of the monument to the victims of Nazism in Warsaw. Photos of the German Chancellor kneeling in repentance in front of the monument to the murdered by his people have traveled the world and are still a reminder of what sincere reconciliation between nations looks like. Willy Brandt said that he did what people usually do when words are not enough. That gesture became a symbol of reconciliation in Europe – the reconciliation of West and East, Poland and Germany.
This is the highest level of sincere apology in the history of mankind. This way of apologizing on behalf of one’s own people for the crimes committed has become, in a way, a standard in the world. With this gesture, Germany honorably admitted its guilt and began to become a truly democratic country. The gesture of the former Chancellor of West Germany had a positive impact throughout the world and is today a parameter for many when discussing apologies in international relations.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was an aggressive target of Eastern and Western aggressors and where the greatest crime after the Holocaust in Europe was committed, the Srebrenica genocide, the first “Balkan Willy Brandt” is still alive. Without such a sincere apology and without a serious attitude towards what happened, there is no easy turning towards a better, common future. For Bosnia and Herzegovina to be better, its people and citizens need to be masters of their will and servants of their conscience. Because nothing ever causes greater rebellion than injustice. And injustice is the anti-Bosnian coalition that works against the state, diplomacy that works against its own state, the denial of judicial, scientific and historical facts about aggression and genocide, the glorification and celebration of convicted war criminals, the establishment of a culture of forgetting instead of a culture of remembrance. All the other evils that Bosnia and Herzegovina suffers are nothing compared to this. My fear of forgetting is greater than the horror that I am forced to remember every day. That is precisely the motto that drives us and that should be passed on to all victims. Forgetting is complicity in a crime. We have no right to forget. The fight for truth and justice is the basis of our existence, and it is worth fighting for. Emir Ramić Director of the Canadian Genocide Research Institute
For Intelektualno.com he writes: dr. Emir Ramić
