“The Shoes on the Danube Promenade” (Danube River Monument) in Budapest.

On 26 June 1941, Hungary formally entered World War II as an Axis power, declaring war on the Soviet Union. For two years, Hungarian troops fought on the Eastern Front against the Red Army, suffering huge losses at the River Don during Operation Little Saturn in 1943. Because of this heavy defeat, the Hungarian government began to form a secret peace deal with the Allies, to remove the country from the conflict and end the war with the Soviets. 

After learning of the planned defection, however, the Nazis occupied Hungary, sending troops into the country on 19 March 1944. After further attempts to disengage from the war, the Germans overturned the Hungarian parliament and implemented a puppet regime under the fascist Arrow Cross Party of Ferenc Szálasi, the leader of the Government of National Unity. Szálasi whose ideology closely followed Adolf Hitler’s pledged all of Hungary’s resources to the German war machine, and as a result, the country was forced to partake in the Holocaust. 

From May to June 1944, over 440,000 Jewish citizens were deported from across Hungary, many being sent to Auschwitz where they were later executed. Approximately half a million people or every third victim in Auschwitz was a Hungarian Jew. 

The Arrow Cross Party played a major role in rounding up Jewish civilians for the Nazis, and executed many Hungarians who were suspected of sheltering Jewish citizens. By late 1944, when the Soviets began their advance on Budapest, the Arrow Cross began a systematic massacre of the city’s remaining Jews, raiding the Jewish Quarter and its ghettos to exterminate the Jewish population. During this time of Arrow Cross Terror, over 3,500 Jewish citizens and Hungarians were brutally shot on the banks of the Danube River by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen.

In the humiliating and dehumanising fashion that characterised the antisemitism of the period,the victims were forced to remove their shoes at gunpoint and face their executioner before they were shot without mercy, falling over the edge into the freezing waters for the currents to wash  their bodies away. Shoes being a valuable commodity during World War II, would be be collected and traded on the black market.

The Jewish victims on the riverbank were not blindfolded. They probably recognized some of their murderers amongst the ranks of The Arrow Cross. And no doubt the Hungarian bystanders, who either approved of these murders or did nothing to prevent them, knew the victims or members of The Arrow Cross. True, the wartime Budapest was less populated and not crammed with tourists, but this slaughter along the Danube still took place in a city. These Jews were not whisked off to the camps  they were not herded into the middle of the woods. They were murdered in the open by people they knew, in front of people they knew, and in the middle of a city. The shots were fired, the bodies floated down the river, the shoes gathered up and the Arrow Cross continued to hunt for more Jews to murder.  And the friends, neighbors, co-workers who stood around and watched? They walked away in their comfortable shoes.

It was a heart-breaking, calamitous, tragic time in Budapest during the days of horror, and in the winter of 1944-45, the Danube was known as “the Jewish Cemetery”

By the 20th Century, the Jewish community had grown to constitute 5% of Hungary’s total population and 23% of the population of the capital, Budapest. However, despite the long history of Jews living in Hungary, by the interwar period anti-Jewish policies were becoming more repressive. It is estimated that by the end of world war two, 560,000 out of 825,000 Jews had been murdered as part of the Holocaust and actions perpetrated by the Hungarian government.

According to records from Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, there is a first hand account of the horrific events along the Danube told by Zby Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, a Hungarian survivor who was saved by her nursemaid, Erzsi Fajo:

 “…I heard a series of popping sounds. Thinking the Russians had arrived, I slunk to the window. But what I saw was worse than anything I had ever seen before, worse than the most frightening accounts I had ever witnessed. Two Arrow Cross men were standing on the embankment of the river, aiming at and shooting a group of men, women, and children into the Danube – one after the other, on their coats the Yellow Star. I looked at the Danube. It was neither blue nor gray but red. With a throbbing heart, I ran back to the room in the middle of the apartment and sat on the floor, gasping for air."

Sixty pairs of  1940s-style shoes, sculpted put of iron. true to life in size and detail,.made in different sizes and styles, to depict how nobody, not even children, was spared the brutality of the Arrow Cross regime/sculpted out of iron, now line the river's bank, creating a ghostly memorial to the victims of this horrific time in history. Conceived by Hungarian film director Can Togay and later designed and created by his friend the sculptor Gula Pauer. 60’ was not just a random number of shoes to include in the holocaust memorial. It reflects the 600,000 Hungarian Jews who died during World War 2, and the memorial was created 60 years after the war. The memorial stretching for around 40 metres along the bank of the Danube was erected on 16 April 2005 and is located between the Hungarian parliament and the prestigious Széchenyi Chain Bridge and is known as 'Shoes on the Danube Promenade'  

The shoes transform this otherwise peaceful river bank into a “traumascape” They force locals and tourists to contemplate the violent history of this location. Even to visitors who are unfamiliar with the precise details of the victim’s death, the location of these empty shoes next to the river provokes an uneasy assumption that their wearers must be lost beneath the water of the river.

This memorial is simple yet chilling, depicting the shoes left behind by the thousands of Jews who were murdered by the Arrow Cross. The style of footwear - a man’s work boot; a business man’s loafer; a woman’s pair of heels; even the tiny shoes of a child - were chosen specifically to illustrate how no one, regardless of age, gender, or occupation was spared.The diversity highlights the indiscriminate cruelty perpetuated by the fascist regime. No matter your age, gender, or occupation, being Jewish was enough of a death sentence. 

What is striking is the individuality of each pair, rendering each shoe a tragedy in itself; Pauer has incorporated the history of the owner into their shoes, through the shape, where it is worn, and the imprint of the heel on the sole. Placed in a casual fashion, as if the people just stepped out of them, these little statues are a grim reminder of the souls who once occupied them.  And when viewing this sculpture, it is difficult to avoid a heartbreaking curiosity as to whom the shoes belonged to and the lives the owners might have led under normal circumstances. They may have lived long lives, fulfilling lives, lives filled with adventure or with boredom, rich lives or ordinary lives, but they lived, until they were murdered.

Despite the grimness and sheer horror of the story. the memorial acts as a beautiful place of reflection and reverence. Along bench runs behind the monument for quiet contemplation.Besides the daily visitors and tourists, the memorial is frequently visited by relatives of the fallen victims and people lay flowers and wreaths and light candles to honor those whose lives were tragically taken. At night, the sculpture is lit only by the glow of the flickering candles.

The authors have succeeded in depicting the incredible brutality while still commemorating the Jewish victims of World War II in a dignified manner. Their memorial standing as a post-apocalyptic witness of history.The monument challenges us to look at the bigger picture, and think about the mass murder of individuals, wherever it occurs, and not just to see them as mere numbers, but real, living, breathing people. 

Most of the shoes on the Danube Promenade Budapest have rusted. They are set tightly on the concrete of the embankment. Shockingly an act of vandalism of the shoe memorial occurred in 2010, when pig trotters were placed in the shoes in a willful act of desecration. The ensuing police investigation turned up no suspects. In 2014 it was reported a number of bronze shoes have been stolen from the riverside memorial. It is not known whether these incidents were racially motivated or simple theft. 

Since  replaced Shoes on the Danube Bank is a quiet reminder of a violent and oppressive past. These small, iron shoes humanise a gruesome statistic, drawing attention to the limitless cruelty of the fascist Arrow Cross and how much we need to continue to fight the current wave of fascism.

At three points along the memorial are cast iron signs with the following text in Hungarian, English, and Hebrew:

To the memory of the victims

shot into the Danube 

by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944–45 

Erected 16th April, 2005