The Shoes on the Danube

Sixty pairs of shoes made of cast iron stand here on the edge of the embankment, men's shoes, women's shoes and children's shoes, all in the styles of the 1940s, and every one of them with the toes pointing towards the water.

In October 1944 the Arrow Cross Party, a Hungarian fascist movement, came to power with German backing. Over the winter that followed, its armed members brought people to this spot, most of them Jewish residents of the city. They were made to take off their shoes first, since leather was worth money in wartime, and then they were shot at the water's edge so the river would carry the rest away. It happened at dozens of places along this bank.

The film director Can Togay came up with the idea for this memorial, and the sculptor Gyula Pauer made it. It was unveiled on the sixteenth of April 2005, the day on which Hungary remembers the victims of the Holocaust. It is made up of the shoes themselves, left behind as if someone had just stepped out of them, and three iron plaques in Hungarian, English and Hebrew.

We walk on along the water until the square opens up on our left.