Shoes on the Danube Bank, Holocaust memorial in the 5th District of Budapest, Hungary.
The memorial consists of sixty pairs of cast iron shoes arranged along the Danube riverbank, representing Jewish victims who were shot by Hungarian fascist militias during World War II before being thrown into the river.
Conceived by film director Can Togay and made with sculptor Gyula Pauer, the memorial was inaugurated on 16 April 2005. It recalls the Arrow Cross Party militiamen's shootings of Jews along the Danube in 1944–1945, when victims were forced to remove their shoes before being shot at the water's edge.
The sixty pairs are authentic copies of 1940s footwear, cast in iron and fixed to the embankment; three cast-iron signs carry the dedication in Hungarian, English and Hebrew. Visitors leave flowers and lit candles along the bank, and the memorial was placed first in a 2013 list of the world's most piercing monuments.
The memorial runs along the Pest embankment about 300 metres south of the Hungarian Parliament, near the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, between Roosevelt Square and Kossuth Square. The iron shoes sit at the water's edge on the stone embankment, with the 40-metre stone bench behind them; approach on foot along the promenade.
Visitors regularly place candles and flowers among the metal shoes, creating an evolving space of personal reflection that has grown organically since the memorial's dedication on April 16, 2005.
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