Behind The Galleries:
Tales of the Unconnected
Blog post #19
15 August 2022
#19: Shoes on the Danube Promenade
If you walk along the Pest side of the River Danube in Budapest, you may be mystified by the sight of 60 pairs of shoes scattered along the pavement about 300 metres south of the Hungarian Parliament. It is as if their owners had just stepped out of them.
Some have worn-down heels, others have shabby uppers; some have laces, others have straps left open; some are standing straight up, while others have fallen over, as if taken off in haste.
Look more closely and you will see that these shoes are made of iron. They form an art installation, the collaboration of renowned Hungarian film director Can Togay and sculptor Gyula Pauer in 2005. As children, they both witnessed the horrors which took place at this terrible spot between October 15, 1944 to March 28, 1945.
During these five months, Hungarian jews were mercilessly persecuted by the brutal, anti-Semitic Arrow Cross Party, led by Ferenc Szalasi (left). He and his party had been installed by Adolf Hitler when the Nazis overthrew the leader of the Hungarian government, Miklos Horthy. Hitler had discovered that Horthy was considering defecting to the Allies’ cause after suffering terrible military losses fighting on the Eastern Front against the Soviet’s Union’s Red Army in 1943.
And so began a short period of unrivalled brutality in Hungary’s capital city, as Arrow Cross militiamen ran riot in Budapest, publicly beating, terrorising and murdering its Jewish population.
Beyond doubt, the most depraved scenes took place beside the Danube in mid-winter, when its freezing waters ran through the city. During that terrible period of Arrow Party rule, when all hope of humanity became a distant memory, about 20,000 Jews, many already stripped naked, were lined up along the banks of the river and ordered, at gunpoint, to remove their shoes (they were a valuable commodity during World War II; the killers could wear them, or trade them on the black market.)
Men, women and children stood shivering in the pitiless cold, facing their executioners without blindfolds. They were shot one by one and their bodies fell into the river to be swept away by the waters. Shooting the Jews into the Danube was convenient because the river carried the bodies away.
photograph © simoncousinsphotography 2022
In some cases the Arrow Cross men tied together the hands of two or three Jews – adults or children. They would shoot only one of the people who were tied together. All of them would fall into the Danube, the dead body pulling the still-living victims with it.
Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, a Hungarian survivor of the barbaric crimes, gave this first-hand account of the atrocities:
“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.”
When the war finally ended, Szálasi was captured by American troops and returned to Hungary. He was tried by the People’s Tribunal in Budapest in open sessions began in February 1946, and sentenced to death for war crimes and high treason. Szálasi was hanged on 12 March 1946 in Budapest, along with two of his former ministers.
But although justice had been served, Can Togay (above) wanted to prove that "Budapest is not willing to forget and dares to face with its past."
“I remember the history of the people killed on the Danube bank as the most terrible feelings of my childhood,” he said. "I can still recall this feeling. This is the reason why it is so meaningful for me that this memorial could be realized based on the joint idea of Gyula Pauer, my friend (above) and me. It highlights a hidden and excruciating piece of the memory of our home town."
And no-one who has come across this chilling memorial will ever forget the story behind it.
photograph © simoncousinsphotography 2022