In December 1970 the then Chancellor of West Germany, Willy Brandt, while on a visit to Poland went down on his knees to apologise before a memorial to those who died in the Warsaw Ghetto in WW2. In 2008, around the time Kevin Rudd was making his celebrated apology to the Stolen Generation, Angel Merkel, in a speech before the Israeli Knesset, said that Germans were “filled with shame” over Germany’s role in the war.