The Shoes on the Danube Bank is a memorial to the Jews who were killed by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest during World War II. They were ordered to take off their shoes, and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away. It represents the shoes left behind on the bank.
During World War II, Raoul Wallenberg and 250 coworkers were working around the clock to save the Jewish population from being sent to Nazi concentration camps. Lars and Edith Ernster, Jacob Steiner, and many others were housed at the Swedish Embassy in Budapest on Üllői Street and other buildings throughout the city which Wallenberg had rented and declared as extraterritorial Swedish to try to safeguard the residents.
On the night of January 8, 1945, an Arrow Cross execution brigade forced all of the inhabitants of a building on Vadasz Street to the banks of the Danube. At midnight, Karoly Szabo and 20 policemen with drawn bayonets confronted the Arrow Cross militia and rescued everyone.
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