While strolling through Budapest, you will discover quite a few monuments that seem simple at first glance, but are in fact very moving. The Holocaust Memorial, located on the Danube embankment on the Pest side, is one of them.
Right on the riverbank stand 60 pairs of shoes cast in iron: children's little boots, women's shoes, men's shoes. It was in groups like these of 50-60 people that in 1944-1945, during World War II, the fascists shot Jews right on the bank of the Danube. Moreover, as they say, out of thrift they used only one bullet for all 60 people: beforehand the prisoners were chained together with a barbed chain, and they shot only the first person standing, who, as soon as he was hit by the bullet, fell into the Danube and pulled all the living people after him. According to available information, before Soviet troops entered the city, about 10 thousand people were killed here!
We would like to remind you that this place, like other sights of Budapest, can be found in our mobile app - Travel Planner for iPhone or Android. By downloading it, you can not only plan your trip to Budapest by creating your own routes, but also use ready-made walks, offline maps, and GPS. Save time and make your travels interesting!
Photo by Darianna Oleinikova
And those sentenced to death were forced to take off their shoes, again because of German thrift — so that the shoes of those who were shot could later be given to someone else.
This memorial on the Danube bank was unveiled in 2005, on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of victory in World War II — on April 16, the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust.
It is worth noting that not far from it there are several more places connected with the history of the Jews of Budapest. You may also be interested in visiting the Great Synagogue — the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world, the Holocaust Memorial Center, in whose halls photographs and video recordings proving the fact of the genocide of Jews are displayed, the Jewish Museum, which is located on the site of the house where Theodor Herzl was born — the father of the Jewish state, the founder of the World Zionist Organization, or the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park, named after the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews. If you would like to explore this issue even more deeply, we recommend taking a tour of Jewish Budapest accompanied by a professional guide.
Want to know what else to see in Budapest? Download the Travel Planner for iPhone and Android. Create your own guide to Budapest by choosing interesting places and ready-made routes and distributing them across the days of your trip. Never done that before? Give it a try, it's truly easy and very convenient!
And if you are not a big fan of planning anything, we recommend using ready-made walking routes around Budapest:
