Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2017 18:12:42 GMT -5
The Shoes on the Danube Bank are a memorial which honors the Jews who were killed by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest during World War II.
Not far from the Hungarian Parliament building sit sixty women’s, men’s, and children’s pairs of old-fashioned shoes, the type people wore in the 1940s.
On the night of 8 January 1945, an Arrow Cross execution brigade forced all the inhabitants of the building on Vadasz Street to the banks of the Danube.
One of the victims was Miklós Voglhut, a Hungarian cabaret and jazz singer, actor, comedian and theater secretary in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. The fact that he was married to a Catholic woman, Kati Szőke, and the fact that he changed his name did not save him from the Holocaust.
On December 19, 1944, Miklós was among the group of Jews who were forced to strip naked, lined up along the banks of the Danube and machine-gunned into the river by Hungarian Nazis.
A firing squad, members of the Arrow Cross Party, shot the prisoners at close range in the bank so that they would fall into the river to be washed away.
They were ordered to take off their shoes, and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away.
All this different shoes represent the different individual Jews who were murdered on the riverbanks.
The idea to place a monument on the river embankment belongs to Gyula Pauer, a Hungarian sculptor awarded the Kossuth-prize, and to his friend, the film director Can Togay.
The sculptor created sixty pairs of period-appropriate shoes out of iron. The shoes are attached to the stone embankment, and behind them lies a 40 meter long, 70 cm high stone bench.
The name of the composition is Shoes on the Danube Promenade and each pair of shoes is modeled after a contemporary shoe from the 1940’s.
At three separate places on the memorial, cast iron signs read in Hungarian, English, and Hebrew: “To the memory of victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944-45.”
People who visit the memorial sometimes light candles or leave behind flowers, placing them inside a particular shoe.
Flowers and other gifts were put in the shoes to honor the victim
Women shoes with flowers and kids shoes with candy
Shoes are a basic commodity that we all own, but despite the events that transpired on the banks of the Danube in that dark winter of 1944-1945, the monument challenges us to look at the bigger picture and think about the mass murder of people wherever it occurs.
www.thevintagenews.com/2016/08/25/priority-shoes-danube-bank-one-touching-holocaust-memorials-budapest-today/
Not far from the Hungarian Parliament building sit sixty women’s, men’s, and children’s pairs of old-fashioned shoes, the type people wore in the 1940s.
On the night of 8 January 1945, an Arrow Cross execution brigade forced all the inhabitants of the building on Vadasz Street to the banks of the Danube.
One of the victims was Miklós Voglhut, a Hungarian cabaret and jazz singer, actor, comedian and theater secretary in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. The fact that he was married to a Catholic woman, Kati Szőke, and the fact that he changed his name did not save him from the Holocaust.
On December 19, 1944, Miklós was among the group of Jews who were forced to strip naked, lined up along the banks of the Danube and machine-gunned into the river by Hungarian Nazis.
A firing squad, members of the Arrow Cross Party, shot the prisoners at close range in the bank so that they would fall into the river to be washed away.
They were ordered to take off their shoes, and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away.
All this different shoes represent the different individual Jews who were murdered on the riverbanks.
The idea to place a monument on the river embankment belongs to Gyula Pauer, a Hungarian sculptor awarded the Kossuth-prize, and to his friend, the film director Can Togay.
The sculptor created sixty pairs of period-appropriate shoes out of iron. The shoes are attached to the stone embankment, and behind them lies a 40 meter long, 70 cm high stone bench.
The name of the composition is Shoes on the Danube Promenade and each pair of shoes is modeled after a contemporary shoe from the 1940’s.
At three separate places on the memorial, cast iron signs read in Hungarian, English, and Hebrew: “To the memory of victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944-45.”
People who visit the memorial sometimes light candles or leave behind flowers, placing them inside a particular shoe.
Flowers and other gifts were put in the shoes to honor the victim
Women shoes with flowers and kids shoes with candy
Shoes are a basic commodity that we all own, but despite the events that transpired on the banks of the Danube in that dark winter of 1944-1945, the monument challenges us to look at the bigger picture and think about the mass murder of people wherever it occurs.
www.thevintagenews.com/2016/08/25/priority-shoes-danube-bank-one-touching-holocaust-memorials-budapest-today/
