President's Day

He wasn't a president, just the first social-democratic chancellor of West Germany.
He wasn't a perfect man. He cheated. He drank. He had skeletons in his closet.
He was not the best chancellor ever. He had problems maneuvering the party and country through rough times.

But one day in Warsaw, while West Germany still didn't want to acknowledge their part of the guilt for WWII and the Holocaust, he fell on his knee in front of the memorial for the fallen souls of the Warsaw Ghetto. His opponents hated him for that gesture. His supporters didn't like him to show weakness. But he didn't care. He did the right thing. For that one moment Willy Brandt wasn't a flawed human being. He was a giant.