Monument-Victims of German invasionWWII

The Pest side is flat, whereas the Buda side is hilly. One of the benefits of being on the Pest side is seeing the Buda Castle, Royal Palace, Matthias Church, and Fisherman’s Bastion.

Our next stop was the Monument to the victims of the German invasion of World War II. This is a very controversial monument itself, as it was secretly installed in 2014 in the middle of the night by the current Hungarian Government. It “attempts” to absolve the Hungarian state and Hungarians for their collaboration with Nazi Germany and complicity in the Holocaust as they “helped the Nazis” put the Hungarian Jews into a ghetto and eventually on trains to the camps. Many individuals and organizations (in protest) leave individual tributes to Holocaust victims along the edge of the site (see photos).

We also saw many of the 116,000+ stumbling stones that are all over 31 countries in Europe. The "Stumbling Stones" are a memorial project by the 78-year-old German artist Gunter Demnig that honors victims of the Nazi regime. He provides (and installs himself) the embedded stones in the ground indicating where Jews had lived prior to WWII.

With a view across the Danube to the Buda side (we will tour Buda and the castle tomorrow), we saw the Chainbridge. Our very last stop and the most somber was the “Shoes on the Danube Bank”, when the Danube turned Red. This 2005 memorial is is to honor the thousands of people massacred by the Arrow Cross Party (ultranationalist party) in Budapest in 1944/45. Victims were ordered to take off their shoes (to be taken by military) and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away. It is a remembrance of the 20,000 Jews taken from the Jewish Ghetto and executed them along the riverbank.Read more