Savvy Traveler: Empty shoes, empty hearts: Tribute to Holocaust victims

Winter on the shores of the Danube River in Budapest can be cold. The wind whips downstream, bringing a bone-chilling frost that even those wrapped in furs cannot escape.

The winter of 1944-45 was especially cold, and the sight of more than 1,000 men, women and children standing, naked, on the edge of the Danube’s banks, shivering, was jarring.

Uniformed men walked behind them, lining them up at the edge of the river and facing the rapidly flowing Danube, chunks of ice moving downstream. The naked prisoners, Jews taken from their ghetto and marched to the river, must have known what was coming, but they could not have guessed at the brutality of the Hungarian Arrow Cross fascists, allies of the Nazis.

Numb as they must have been, the sound of cartridges being chambered into rifles and the cocking of pistols had to add chills to their shivering. The Arrow Cross members ordered the prisoners to hold hands and move closer to the edge of the embankment.

The war was coming to a close. It was obvious even to the most ardent Nazi sympathizer that they had lost. Vengeance would soon follow and their job now was to minimize the ability for retribution.

Ammunition was low so an expedient method had to be employed. With the prisoners gripping each other’s hands, the Arrow Cross walked up and down the line, shooting every third or fourth person. As the dead fell into the river, they pulled in the living person on either side whose hands they held tightly.

In one fell swoop the Arrow Cross obliterated thousands of lives, saved ammunition and did not have to worry about disposing of bodies as they floated downstream, murdering 10,000 to 15,000 between October, 1944 and March, 1945 — Jews, Christians and anyone else they perceived as not being part of a master race. Clothing was disposed of but shoes were a valuable commodity and they were saved.

Today, some 60 pairs of metal shoes sit on the bank facing the river. For the curious, a few yards from the water’s edge, is a plaque commemorating those who died and explaining the Monument of the Shoes. Although the murders crossed ethnic lines, the brutality nearly wiped out the city’s once-thriving Jewish community.

The Uniworld Cruise Line’s ship River Princess sits within sight of the monument. While it is not on the tour agenda, buses carrying the passengers slow as they pass the shoes, the driver providing an explanation.

Uniworld’s optional tour, “Jewish Budapest,” passes the memorial and goes into the heart of the old Jewish section on the Pest side. The cruisers are taken on a short walk through the sector and points of interest are indicated. Without doubt, the highlight is the Grand Synagogue that somehow escaped the brutality of the Nazis and the Arrow Cross.

The synagogue is still an active religious institution, although the number of congregants has been seriously diminished. It is called the most “beautiful Catholic synagogue in the world.”

The reason is immediately apparent. It is unlike virtually any other synagogue in the world, laid out much as the interior of any great church.

In the rear courtyard are memorials to those murdered. Alongside is a garden with headstones. Make sure to visit the rear of the synagogue. There, a metal tree in the shape of an inverted menorah stands, on its leaves engraved the names of thousands of victims of the Holocaust. Yards away stands the house in which Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, was born.

Guides and residents of the city will confidentially confide to you that even though the war has been over for some 67 years, there is still a lingering atmosphere of anti-Semitism. The government is hard at work today in an effort to distance itself and its people from that negative impression.

Bob and Sandy Nesoff are members of the American Society of Authors and Journalists

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