The reign of terror of the Arrow Cross Party – Shoes on the Danube Bank, Budapest

Fact of the Hungarian figure „Brick Factory in Obuda – The Holocaust in Hungary”

Part of the „The Holocaust” topic

On October 15, 1944, following Miklós Horthy’s failed attempt to withdraw Hungary from World War II, the far-right Arrow Cross Party, led by Ferenc Szálasi, seized power. Szálasi proclaimed himself the „Leader of the Nation” and aligned the country fully with Nazi Germany’s genocidal policies. Although half of Hungary was already under Soviet occupation and the war was nearing its end, the Arrow Cross Party intensified the brutal campaign against the remaining Jewish population in Budapest.

The Arrow Cross regime systematically targeted Jews still in Budapest, particularly those forced into labor battalions and those confined within the city. By December, Jews were corralled into the ‘Great Ghetto,’ where they lived under horrifying conditions. However, the Arrow Cross’s terror extended beyond the confines of the ghetto. In one of the most chilling acts of violence, party members conducted death marches, forcibly leading Jews to the Danube River. There, tens of thousands of victims were shot into the icy waters, a haunting act now memorialized by the „Shoes on the Danube Bank.”

This memorial, featuring iron shoes along the riverbank, stands as a tribute to those murdered during this period. Each pair of shoes represents the Jewish men, women, and children whose lives were taken in this senseless brutality. Before their execution, they were forced to remove their shoes—a symbol of dignity and humanity, stripped from them in their final moments.

The atrocities committed by the Arrow Cross Party were not an isolated event. Similar acts of collaboration and genocide took place throughout Central and Eastern Europe. In Slovakia, the Hlinka Guard played a role in deporting Slovak Jews, while in Croatia, the Ustaša regime carried out its own brutal campaigns against Jewish and other minority populations. These violent regimes were deeply connected to the broader Nazi effort to exterminate Jewish communities across the continent.