On a beautiful autumn day, Sam Howard was strolling along the banks of the Danube River on the Pest side in Budapest, Hungary. Double-decked cruise ships that crisscross the river ferrying tourists between various European countries were passing by in both directions. Sam could hear the fragments of conversations as well as sweet sound of music emanating from those ships. On the bank, the tourists along with the local residents were also appreciating the glorious day. Sam was taking the walk after paying a visit to the country’s Parliament Building, an iconic landmark of the city. Suddenly, Sam noticed a collection of shoes scattered on the bank in front of him, as if the owners just took them off to dip their toes in the water. But Sam could not see anybody in the water. As he approached the area, it became evident that they were not actual leather shoes, but all metallic with varied sizes; a few of them appeared to be more rusted than the others. He looked around to discover that the place was a memorial site known as “Shoes on the Danube Bank,” with a near-by plaque dedicating the art “To the memory of the victims shot into the Danube by the Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944 – 45.” Ideologically, the members of the Arrow Cross were aligned with the Nazis from Germany and acted as their proxy, thus rounding up the dissidents as well as the Jews of the city. Later, they would bring them to the bank of the river, make them to take off their shoes, line them up along the bank and shoot them so that the bodies would fall into the water to be carried away by the flow of the river. It had been said that the near the end of the Second World War, in order to save the ammunition, the victims were used to be chained and only the two book-end ones will be shot to death, so that rest of the entire group would fall into the river and drown.
The memorial was conceived by film director Can Togay, not only to honor the victims, but also to force the nation to look into the past pact of a section of its citizenry with the evil Nazi machinery. Sculptor Gyula Pauer then brought it to reality in the April of 2005. Sam had arrived in Budapest from the US, in the midst of a new Presidential regime that severely fragmented the country right along a political fault line giving rise to the emergence of political parties with extreme hate-filled ideologies against the ethnic and religious minorities, creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty for the future.
Sam went around each and every single shoe in this memorial repeating to himself those famous words from historian George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
The memorial was conceived by film director Can Togay, not only to honor the victims, but also to force the nation to look into the past pact of a section of its citizenry with the evil Nazi machinery. Sculptor Gyula Pauer then brought it to reality in the April of 2005. Sam had arrived in Budapest from the US, in the midst of a new Presidential regime that severely fragmented the country right along a political fault line giving rise to the emergence of political parties with extreme hate-filled ideologies against the ethnic and religious minorities, creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty for the future.
Sam went around each and every single shoe in this memorial repeating to himself those famous words from historian George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
