Cipők a Duna-parton, Budapest

The Shoes on the Danube Bank is a memorial made from the image of abandoned footwear. Its sixty pairs of iron shoes are fixed along the stone embankment, with a long stone bench set behind them. Can Togay conceived the work, and sculptor Gyula Pauer created it with him; the memorial was unveiled on 16 April 2005.

The shoes recall a terrible act during the Arrow Cross terror in Budapest. People were forced to remove their shoes because footwear could be taken and sold, then they were shot at the water’s edge so their bodies fell into the river. The memorial honours 23,500 people who were shot into the Danube, including 20,000 Jews.

At three points, cast-iron plaques carry the remembrance in Hungarian, English, and Hebrew, identifying the victims and the Arrow Cross militiamen responsible in 1944–1945. This is not an imagined scene: the shoes represent what was left on the bank after the killings. The memorial stands on the Pest side of the Danube Promenade, about 300 metres south of the Hungarian Parliament, near the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Let the varied shapes and worn-looking surfaces hold your attention; each empty form gives absence a physical presence.