Jun 9, 2025
A powerful memorial: dozens of pairs of iron shoes, left behind on the riverbank. A tribute to the victims of the Holocaust in Budapest, forced to remove their shoes before being executed—tied together in pairs: one shot dead, the other condemned to drown or freeze in the waters of the Danube. I imagine a river full of bodies.
The executioners? Not the Nazis, but fellow Hungarians—members of the fascist Arrow Cross militia who, even after the Germans had fled, finished the job. They murdered the remaining Jewish prisoners just before the Red Army entered Budapest.