The Shoes

A very interesting day spent walking around Budapest, learning a lot about Hungarian history as we visited various sites around the city such as the incredibly ornate Parliament Building, Liberty Square (where Mr. W met Ronald Reagan -- see extra), and enjoyed a delicious lunch of traditional Hungarian foods at the amusingly named Urban Bandit Restaurant.

The most moving sight we saw today was a memorial on the banks of the Danube called The Shoes.  Dozens of pairs of vintage 1940's era shoes cast in iron line the bank of the river where hundreds of Jews were murdered in the winter of 1944-45 by members of the Arrow Cross party.  It is absolutely heartbreaking to see these tangible reminders of a terrible, dark time.  You can easily picture the victims being forced to line up on the edge of the embankment, and being ordered to remove their shoes before being shot, their lifeless bodies falling into the river to be carried out to sea.  How awful that shoes were more valued than the lives of the people who wore them.