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The Shoes on the Danube Promenade

On the banks of the Danube River in Budapest, not far from the Hungarian Parliament building, sit sixty pairs of old-fashioned shoes, the type people wore in the 1940s. There are women's shoes, there are men's shoes and there are children's shoes. They sit at the edge of the water, scattered and abandoned, as though their owners had just stepped out of them and left them there.

If you look more closely, you see that the shoes are rusted, made of iron and set into the concrete of the embankment. They are a memorial and a monument to the Hungarian Jews who, in the winter of 1944-1945, were shot on the banks of the Danube River by the members of the Arrow Cross Party. Known as "The Shoes on the Danube Promenade", the memorial was conceptualized by film director Can Togay, and was created by Togay together with the sculptor Gyula Pauer. It was installed on the Pest bank of the Danube River in Budapest in 2005. At three separate places on the memorial, cast iron signs read in Hungarian, English and Hebrew: "To the memory of victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944-45."

During that autumn and winter, after the Germans had toppled the government of Miklos Horthy bringing Ferenc Szálasi and his fascist, violently antisemitic Arrow Cross Party to power, the Arrow Cross introduced a reign of terror in Budapest. The Arrow Cross militiamen ran amok in the streets of Budapest, beating, plundering, and killing Jews publicly. Thousands of Jews were murdered all over the city. Shooting the Jews into the Danube was convenient because the river carried the bodies away.

Often, the Arrow Cross murderers would force their terrified Jewish victims to remove their shoes before shooting them into the Danube. Shoes, after all, were a valuable commodity during World War II. The killers could use them, or trade them on the black market. This, then, is the historical reality behind the monument. Sometimes, though, the victims' shoes were so worn-out and useless, that the militiamen killed the Jews with their shoes still on. And sometimes, the Arrow Cross pulled the shoestrings out of children's shoes, and used them to tie the helpless Jewish victims' hands together before they were shot. Sometimes they used rope instead. The killers faced their victims without mercy; the victims faced the killers without blindfolds.

In some cases the Arrow Cross men tied together the hands of two or three Jews – adults or children. Then they would shoot only one of the people who were tied together. When they did their work properly and positioned their victims at the edge of the water, all three would fall into the Danube, the dead body pulling the still-living victims with it. All the bodies, tied together by shoelaces or rope or fate, would either sink or float away down the river. If the militiamen noticed that Jews were still alive, they used them for target practice. However, most of the Jews – especially the children – died immediately because the water was freezing cold. During the days of horror in the winter of 1944-1945, the Danube was known as "the Jewish Cemetery."