From a recent article on Angela Merkel:

Germans and Russians are bound together by such terrible memories that any suggestion of conflict leads straight to the unthinkable. Michael Naumann put the Ukraine crisis in the context of "this enormous emotional nexus between perpetrator and victim," one that leaves Germans perpetually in the weaker position. In 1999, Naumann, at that time the culture minister under Schröder, tried to negotiate the return of five million artifacts taken out of East Germany by the Russians after the Second World War. During the negotiations, he and his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Gubenko, shared their stories. Naumann, who was born in 1941, lost his father a year later, at the Battle of Stalingrad. Gubenko was also born in 1941, and his father was also killed in action. Five months later, Gubenko's mother was hanged by the Germans.

"Checkmate," the Russian told the German. Both men cried.

"There was nothing to negotiate," Naumann recalled. "He said, 'We will not give anything back, as long as I live.'"