Thank you, film director Can Togay and sculptor Gyula Pauer, for honoring those so senselessly lost.
The most terrible of atrocities had been memoralized simply and poignantly.
Sixty pairs of rusted period shoes in all styles and sizes had been cast in iron. Different sizes and styles suggested no one had been spared - rich, poor, young, old, mother, child, peasant, professional - all had been forced at gunpoint, usually in the middle of the night, to march to the banks of the Danube River just south of Budapest's grand Parliament building; all had been instructed to remove their shoes; thereafter, all had been shot before falling into the river that carried them away.
Sixty pairs of rusted period shoes in all styles and sizes had been cast in iron. Different sizes and styles suggested no one had been spared - rich, poor, young, old, mother, child, peasant, professional - all had been forced at gunpoint, usually in the middle of the night, to march to the banks of the Danube River just south of Budapest's grand Parliament building; all had been instructed to remove their shoes; thereafter, all had been shot before falling into the river that carried them away.
Arrow Cross militiamen avoided the backbreaking task of burials with this latest atrocity.
All told, 3,500 (800 of whom were Jews) fell victim to Arrow Cross militiamen, Hungary's pro-German, anti-Semitic, national socialist party during World War II.
History can be such a beast.
I take that back. War can be a beast, a beast created by man.
We're the only species on the planet that kills our own.
Walking in the footsteps of those lost so tragically decades ago, I lamented humanity's capacity to inflict pain again and again and again in the name of religion, power, politics, land, money; pick your poison.
I wondered, too, just how long mankind might continue ignoring the past before we have no future.
History can be such a beast.
I take that back. War can be a beast, a beast created by man.
We're the only species on the planet that kills our own.
Walking in the footsteps of those lost so tragically decades ago, I lamented humanity's capacity to inflict pain again and again and again in the name of religion, power, politics, land, money; pick your poison.
I wondered, too, just how long mankind might continue ignoring the past before we have no future.
The monument, entitled "Shoes on the Danube Bank", was erected on April 16, 2005.
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