Have you heard about the shoes on the Danube?
No its not the start of a joke, in fact its so far away from being funny.
Today we visited The House of Terror in Budapest.
It tells of the events during the war and later of what life was like whilst Hungary was under communist rule.
It takes you through the timeline of systemic abuse. How children reported their parents. How brother tortured brother only to end up being tortured themselves for the same crimes of being of Jewish descent. And of the murder of thousands upon thousands of people at the hands of first by the Red Army and later by Arrow Cross.
Anyone who dare express an opinion that didn’t fit their ideal risked persecution. About 1 in 3 people secretly investigated. The slightest whiff or rebellion and they were taken for questioning.
In the basement of the museum, there are examples of the conditions these prisoners were held in.
Tiny cells not small enough to even turn in.
Chairs set up with electrical devices ready to shock the recipients into a confession.
And the gallows to which so many lost their lives. That quick jerk of the rope.
And the scariest bit is that occupation remained up until as late as the early 1990s.
This isn’t some long-ago history we can pretend to ignore. It happened in my lifetime!
One of the storied the museum told was how in the autumn and winter of 1944-45, men, women and children were led to the banks of the river Danube, told to remove their shoes. And then shot. Their bodies dropping into the rive to be carried away by the current. Their shoes later gathered up and sold.
In memorial to these events, bronze cast shoes are set in a tribute to the memory of these souls.
After the museum, we visited the banks of the Danube to see this monument.
Candles are left beside it in their wake.
We questioned if they had been left by family members who knew their relatives had lost their lives that day, or if they were left by those who had just been touched by the story and felt compelled to show their respects.
It’s so easy to forget how lucky some of us are to not have to live our lives in fear of persecution, and the constant threat of death hanging over us. But even in 2022, so many still do.
We need to do better.
We need to change.
