Of Horror and Heroes

"Shoes On the Danube" memorial, created by Gyula Pauer and Can Togay, honors the Jews shot on the banks of the Danube in the desperate last months of WWII.

These cast-iron shoes on the promenade behind the Parliament Building call us to remember the Budapest Jews, both young and old, that Raoul Wallenberg, Carl Lutz and other righteous Gentiles were unable to rescue during World War II.

Before that war began, more than 200,000 Jews lived in Budapest, making the city the center of Hungarian Jewish culture in the late 1930s.  In the early days of the war, approximately 5,000 Jews from Germany and Austria fled to Budapest which was, at that time, still considered a safe haven.  With the beginning of deportations of Jews from Slovakia in March 1942, as many as 8,000 Slovak Jewish refugees also fled to Budapest, believing that they would find shelter there. And they did--until 1944.

Jews of all ages and genders were ordered to remove their shoes; then they were shot by the Arrow Cross militiamen.  Their bodies tumbled into the Danube River, leaving only their shoes behind. 

Despite discriminatory legislation against the Jews and widespread anti-semitism, the Jewish population of Budapest was relatively secure until the Germans invaded and occupied Hungary in March 1944.  Between April and July 1944, German and Hungarian authorities rounded up the Jews in the Hungarian provinces and deported them to concentration camps.  By the end of July 1944, the only Jews remaining in the Hungary were those in Budapest.

This Raoul Wallenberg commemorative statue, created by Pal Patzay, was removed by the Communist regime and restored to its place of honor 50 years later. 

When the Soviets liberated Budapest in February 1945, only 100,000 Jews remained in the city, mostly because of the efforts of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish legate, and his Swiss Consul counterpart, Carl Lutz.

Carl Lutz Memorial at the entrance to the Budapest ghetto 

Raoul Wallenberg was made an honorary citizen of Budapest posthumously in 2003 for his rescue efforts that saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from being transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  

Arriving in Budapest on July 9, 1944 with the title of first secretary to the Swedish legation in Hungary, Raoul Wallenberg used funds from the United States’ War Refugee Board and from Sweden to establish hospitals and soup kitchens as well as designating more than 30 ‘safe’ houses that made up the Jewish ghetto of Budapest.  

This placard outside the gates of the former Swedish Embassy memorializes Raoul Wallenberg, and his Swedish colleagues, Carl-Ivan Danielson and Per Anger.

When the Arrow Cross fascists, acting in agreement with Germany Nazi Party, seized power over the Hungarian government on October 15, 1944, they immediately began to deport Hungarian Jews in record-breaking numbers.  Wallenberg repeatedly, and often personally, intervened to secure the release of those Jews who held official certificates of protection as well as many others who held forged copies.

The former Swedish Embassy where Wallenberg, Danielson and Anger worked

Sandor Ardai, one of the chauffeurs working for Wallenberg, recounted what Wallenberg did when he intercepted a trainload of Jews about to leave for Auschwitz:

.. he climbed up on the roof of the train and began handing in protective passes through the doors which were not yet sealed. He ignored orders from the Germans for him to get down, then the Arrow Cross men began shooting and shouting at him to go away. He ignored them and calmly continued handing out passports to the hands that were reaching out for them. I believe the Arrow Cross men deliberately aimed over his head, as not one shot hit him, which would have been impossible otherwise. I think this is what they did because they were so impressed by his courage. After Wallenberg had handed over the last of the passports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to the caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don't remember exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and Arrow Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it. [excerpt from "The Wallenberg Effect," The Journal of Leadership Studies, 1997]

Is it any wonder that the mayor of Budapest made Raoul Wallenberg a citizen of the city posthumously in 2003?  

Budapest's Holocaust Memorial, designed by Imre Varga, is a weeping willow tree and an inverted menorah with seven branches.  The inscription says, "Whose pain can be greater than mine?"  Nearly 600,000 thin metal leaves are inscribed with the names of Hungarian Jews killed in the Holocaust.

In November 1944, the Arrow Cross ordered the remaining Jews in Budapest into a closed ghetto. Jews who did not have protective papers issued by a neutral power were to move to the ghetto by early December. Between December 1944 and the end of January 1945, the Arrow Cross took as many as 20,000 Jews from the ghetto, forced them to remove their shoes and shot them along the banks of the Danube, throwing their bodies into the river. 

This small, free-standing wall inside the courtyard of Dohany Synagogue in the Jewish neighborhood of Budapest symbolizes the Ghetto Wall that surrounded this neighborhood during WWII.

On January 13, 1945, Russian troops liberated Budapest from the rule of the Arrow Cross and the Nazis. Wallenberg requested permission to visit Soviet military headquarters in Debrecen, a city east of Budapest, where he hoped to convince the Russian leaders of his support plan for the surviving Jews. Wallenberg was never seen again.  

Some sources believe he was sent to Siberia and that he died there in 1947. Others believe that he lived several years beyond that date. No one knows for sure what happened to Wallenberg, but it is certain that he never again returned to Sweden to take up the reins of his family's banking business.

Budapest's Dohány Synagogue is Europe's largest synagogue.

"I will never be able to go back to Sweden without knowing inside myself thst I'd done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible."

~Raoul Wallenerg