The Arrow Cross militiamen were the pro-German, anti-Semitic national socialist party members of Hungary in 1944-45. During their reign of terror, their victims were taken down to the edge of the Danube, told to remove their shoes and clothing then they were shot and their bodies fell into the river to be carried away with the current. Shoes on the Danube Bank gives remembrance to those people. Created by Gayula Pauer, a Hungarian sculptor, and his friend, Can Togay, in 2005, the memorial is comprised of sixty pairs of period-appropriate shoes made out of iron and attached to the stone embankment. The different sizes and styles of shoes depict how no one was spared - men, women, children; businessmen, sportsmen, etc. Behind the memorial, at three points, 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 16 April 2005″. It is so very moving.
I am currently reading a book called Gratitude by Joseph Kertes which fictionally depicts the plight of the Jews in Budapest in 1944-45 and the efforts of Raol Wallenberg to save as many as he could. Because Hungary was an ally of the Nazis, apparently its Jews were not persecuted until later in the war starting in 1944. Two nights ago at dinner, we started chatting to an English couple sitting beside us and suddenly this all became more real. During the conversation, the man told us his grandparents, from here, had perished in Auschwitz but his father, 21 years old at the time, was warned one night by a policeman friend to leave immediately or he would perish. Thankfully he did and somehow managed to survive. Stories like this, from his son, really bring this almost incomprehensible horrible part of the past to life.
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