The Shoes on the Danube Bank is a memorial statue by film director Can Togay and sculptor Gyula Pauer, created to honour the people killed by Fascist militiamen in Budapest during World War II. The installation is made up of 60 pairs of period-appropriate iron shoes, representing the victims who had to take their shoes off before execution, leaving them behind on the riverbank. On cast iron plaques alongside, the following text is written in Hungarian, English and Hebrew: “To the memory of the victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944–45. Erected 16 April 2005”. In 2017 the statue was ranked second among the world’s most fascinating public sculptures by America’s prestigious Architectural Digest magazine.
