Walking Among the Memorials of Budapest and Linz

In the afternoon of 15 May 2026, with some free time before the end of our river cruise, I decided to revisit the Shoes on the Danube Bank, a site we had briefly seen during our walking tour that morning. From the ship’s docking point, I walked nearly 2km to the Danube embankment where the iron shoes stand in silent testimony to one of Hungary’s darkest chapters.

The Shoes on the Danube Bank is among Budapest’s most moving Holocaust memorials. Created in 2005 by film director Can Togay and sculptor Gyula Pauer, it consists of sixty pairs of iron shoes fixed to the riverbank near the Hungarian Parliament. They commemorate the victims who were executed at this site during the final months of World War II.

In 1944-1945, members of the fascist Arrow Cross militia carried out mass shootings along the Danube. Many victims, most of them Jews, were ordered to remove their shoes before being shot so that the footwear could be reused or sold. Their bodies were then pushed into the river. The memorial captures this atrocity through absence rather than representation: abandoned shoes marking lives suddenly and violently interrupted.

Unlike conventional monuments, there are no heroic figures or grand narratives. The shoes rest at ground level, inviting visitors to look down and reflect on the ordinary humanity of those who perished. Cast in iron, they convey permanence and weight, while their varied styles hint at the individuality of the men, women, and children they represent. Flowers, candles, and small stones left by visitors - echoing Jewish mourning traditions - continue to transform the site into a living place of remembrance. Beside it, the flowing Danube serves as a powerful metaphor for time, loss, and memory.

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Earlier that morning, our walking tour had taken us to Liberty Square in Budapest, where two very different interpretations of Holocaust memory stand side by side.

The official “Memorial for the Victims of the German Occupation,” unveiled in 2014, depicts Hungary as the Archangel Gabriel being attacked by a German imperial eagle. Its symbolism presents Hungary primarily as a victim of Nazi occupation. Historians and Jewish organisations have criticised the monument for downplaying Hungary’s own role in the Holocaust, noting that Hungarian authorities actively participated in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz in 1944.

Directly in front of the monument is the informal “Living Memorial,” created by citizens, survivors, and descendants who felt that the official narrative failed to acknowledge this responsibility. Composed of family photographs, letters, identity documents, candles, stones, and personal mementoes, it is not state-sponsored or formally curated. Instead, it continues to evolve through public participation.

Together, the two memorials create a powerful dialogue. One is official, permanent, and institutional; the other personal, fragile, and continually changing. The Living Memorial serves as a counter-narrative, restoring individual voices and experiences largely absent from the state monument. Surrounded by important political institutions, Liberty Square has become a symbolic space where competing interpretations of history coexist in full view.

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Earlier in our cruise, when we visited Linz, I encountered yet another approach to remembrance. The city’s Memorial Signs for Victims of National Socialism, designed by Austrian artist Andreas Strauss, consists of slender brass steles placed near the last freely chosen homes of Jewish victims.

Rather than concentrating memory in a single location, these memorials are woven into the urban landscape - along streets, beside shops, and in residential neighbourhoods - ensuring that remembrance becomes part of everyday life. Each stele records names, birth years, and known fates, restoring identity to those who were persecuted and murdered.

A distinctive feature is a small bell attached to each stele. When pressed, it emits a soft chime reminiscent of a household doorbell, evoking both the familiarity of home and the tragedy of lives uprooted by persecution. The simple act of ringing the bell transforms remembrance into a personal and physical experience.

We paused at Altstadt 3 in Linz’s old town. This stele commemorates Berthold Plaschkes, born in 1874 and murdered during the Holocaust, together with other members of his family. Located in a narrow street lined with shops and cafés, the memorial blends into the rhythms of daily life. This juxtaposition creates a quiet but powerful tension between present-day normality and the violence of the past.

Taken together, these three sites - the Shoes on the Danube Bank, the competing memorials of Liberty Square, and the dispersed steles of Linz - demonstrate different ways of confronting the legacy of the Holocaust. One speaks through absence, another through contested memory, and the third through quiet integration into everyday space. None offers simple closure. Instead, each reminds us that remembrance is an ongoing act - one that must continually be revisited, questioned, and renewed.