Shoes on the Danube Promenade The Shoes on the Danube Promenade is a memorial concept by filmdirector Can Togay and was created by him and the sculptor Gyula Pauer on the bank of the Danube River in Budapest . It honors 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 their shoes left behind on the bank . The memorial . It is located on the Pest side of the Danube Promenade in line with where Zoltan Street would meet the Danube if it continued that far , about south of the Hungarian Parliament and near the Hungarian Academy of Sciences . Translation : " The composition entitled ' Shoes on the Danube Bank ' gives remembrance to the people shot into the Danube during the time of the Arrow Cross terror . The sculptor created sixty pairs of period - appropriate shoes out of iron . The shoes are attached to the stone embankment , and behind them lies a 40 meter long , 70 cm high stone bench . At three points are cast iron signs , with the following text 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 . " ( Source : MTI , Saturday , April 16 , 2005 . ) Translation : " A holocaust memorial will be dedicated on Saturday , the holocaust victim memorial day , in Budapest . Sixty pairs of cast iron shoes , cast in the styles of the 40 ' s , stand in remembrance of the people shot into the Danube during the Arrow Cross terror . The memorial lies on the riverbank between Roosevelt square and Kossuth square . " ( source : Népszabadság Online , April 15 , 2005 . ) January 1945 . 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 camp s ; this figure later rose to approximately 400 . Lars and Edith Ernster , Jacob Steiner , and many others were housed at the Swedish Embassy in Budapest on Üllői Street 2 - 4 and 32 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 the building on Vadasz Street to the banks of the Danube . At midnight , Karoly Szabo and 20 policemen with drawn bayonet s broke into the Arrow Cross house and rescued everyone there ( see also front page of 1947 newspaper below ) . Among those saved were Lars Ernster , who fled to Sweden and became a member of the board of the Nobel Foundation from 1977 to 1988 , and Jacob Steiner , who fled to Israel and became a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . Steiner ' s father had been shot dead by Arrow Cross militiamen on December 25 , 1944 , falling into the Danube . His father had been an officer in World War I and spent four years as a prisoner of war in Russia . Dr . Erwin K . Koranyi , a psychiatrist in Ottawa , wrote about the night of January 8 , 1945 in his " Dreams and Tears : Chronicle of a Life " ( 2006 ) , " in our group , I saw Lajos Stoeckler " and " The police holding their guns at the Arrowcross cutthroats . One of the high - ranking police officers was Pal Szalai , with whom Raoul Wallenberg used to deal . Another police officer in his leather coat was Karoly Szabo . " Pal Szalai was honored as Righteous among the Nations on April 7 , 2009 for helping save these Hungarian Jews . Karoly Szabo was honored as Righteous among the Nations on November 12 , 2012 .