Shoes on the Danube Bank
Why is it significant?
Walk to the stone edge of the embankment and look down. Lined up along the lip of the river are shoes, sixty pairs of them, cast in iron: heavy work boots, a woman's shoe with a small heel, a pair so tiny they can only belong to a child.
Key Facts
| Place | Shoes on the Danube Bank |
|---|---|
| Address | Id. Antall József rakpart, 1054 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.50400, 19.04480 |
| Part of Walk | Crown, Dome and River: Budapest's Parliament, St Stephen's Basilica & the Danube Bank |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk to the stone edge of the embankment and look down. Lined up along the lip of the river are shoes, sixty pairs of them, cast in iron: heavy work boots, a woman's shoe with a small heel, a pair so tiny they can only belong to a child. They face the water, as if their owners had just stepped out of them.
That is exactly what happened. On 15 October 1944, with German backing, the fascist Arrow Cross party seized power in Hungary. Through the winter that followed, as the Red Army closed in on the city, Arrow Cross militiamen dragged Jews, and others they called enemies, out of houses and shelters. Many were marched to the riverbank, ordered to take off their shoes, which were worth something in a starving city, and shot so that they fell into the Danube.
Nobody knows how many died like this. Historians speak of thousands of people murdered by Arrow Cross squads in Budapest that winter, many of them along the river. The killing stopped in Pest only when Soviet troops took this side of the city on 18 January 1945.
The memorial was conceived by the film director Can Togay and made with the sculptor Gyula Pauer, and it was unveiled in April 2005. The shoes are modelled on real footwear of the 1940s, and nothing about them is heroic. Three small iron plaques, in Hungarian, English and Hebrew, dedicate them to the victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944 and 1945. Visitors leave candles, flowers and small stones, the Jewish way of marking that someone came to remember.
Take as long as you need here. When you are ready, turn away from the river, cross the road at the lights and walk inland through the quiet streets of Lipótváros. Your next stop is a small flame at a street corner, burning for another execution, a century earlier.