Copyrighted © by Janet Lynn Davis. All rights reserved.

ordered 
to remove their shoes, 
then shot... 
   the soft steps of visitors 
      along the Danube

Author’s Note:

Of all the amazing sights we saw on our brief visit to Europe in 2013, this small, simple exhibit we discovered on our own in Budapest at the very end of the trip is hands down the most memorable and poignant to me.

Publisher’s Note:

The photograph above shows iron shoes from a sculpture exhibition in Budapest, Hungary, created by movie director Can Togay and sculptor Gyula Pauerfrom. The exhibition memorializes Jewish “victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944-45” (Shoes on the Danube).

Janet Lynn Davis

lives with her husband in a small community carved out of the woods to the north of Houston, Texas, USA. In her former life, she worked in the fields of technical writing/editing and communications. Nowadays, she writes poetry, especially tanka; her work over the past several years has appeared in numerous online and print venues. She served as vice president of the Tanka Society of America during 2014 and 2015.

Poet’s blog: twigs&stones

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The Shoes on the Danube Promenade—Commemoration of the Tragedy by Sheryl Ochayon at Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center

⚡ Shoes on the Danube by Laura Deutsch in Holocaust Studies (20 March 2016)