In the movie "Music Box", a young American lawyer of Hungarian origin, played by Jessica Lange, stops on the bank of the Danube next to the Chain Bridge in Budapest and stares at the river. That's when she decides to check once again the allegations that her beloved father Miška, before the end of the Second World War - as a member of the "Arrow Crosses" ("njilas") - participated in the killing of Jews, Roma and communists, right there on the banks of the Danube in Budapest. In 2005, an unusual monument was discovered near that place, made of metal shoes - men's, women's and children's. The shoes symbolize the victims who were killed and thrown into the Danube by the "Njilas". The author of the monument is the sculptor Djula Power.
In those times of war, shoes were considered valuable items and could be sold well. That is why the executioners ordered their victims to take off their clothes. Historical data say that 3.500 people were killed on the banks of the Danube and thrown into the river, 800 of them Jews. Most of the murders took place in December 1944 and January 1945. In February 1945, the Red Army liberated Budapest.
The bronze shoes are attached to the concrete base with long rods so that the memorial is not desecrated. However, the "Budapest Beacon" reported in September 2014 that several bronze shoes were missing.
A ten-minute walk from that place is Budapest's Freedom Square, where since 2014, after Orbán's return to power, there is a Memorial to the Victims of the German Occupation of Hungary in 1944 and 1945. In front of him are photographs of the victims (primarily Jewish) of the Horti regime between 1939 and 1944. The monument represents the Archangel Gabriel - he symbolizes "innocent" Hungary attacked by an aggressive German eagle. Critics of that monument claim that, until 1944, Hungary is presented to them as a country where there were no crimes against other nations, but that, as is known - especially here in Bačka - does not correspond to the truth. At the foot of the monument there is a rather vague inscription: "In memory of the victims."
The "Holocaust Educational Trust" from London, a non-profit organization that deals with education about the Holocaust, primarily for young people of different nationalities, assessed that the monument represents a typical example of "crime denial". The Hungarian authorities found a compromise solution - the monument remained, but they allowed the installation of a "protest fence" in front of it with texts about the Holocaust in Hungary before March 1944, photographs of the victims and objects such as suitcases symbolizing the deportation of Jews to the camps. So that monument actually became a counter-monument that is in a kind of dialogue with the one that symbolizes the Archangel Gabriel.
On the way out of Budapest is the Memento Park, which was opened on June 29, 1993, on the second anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. There are numerous monuments dedicated to Lenin, Marx, Stalin, as well as many Hungarian revolutionaries and communists, and those from the "fraternal countries" of the Warsaw Pact. All these monuments once stood on the streets and squares of Budapest and other Hungarian cities, but - unlike most of those in the former Yugoslavia - they were not melted down or destroyed, but gathered in one place to testify to an important period of Hungarian and world history, but also art.
Memento Park consists of two parts: Statue Park and Witness Square, which is east of the main entrance and can be visited without paying an entrance fee. There are 42 statues and monuments in the Statue Park. On the Square of Witnesses there is a replica of the giant "Stalin Boots", which became a symbol of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, after the statue of Stalin was toppled from its plinth, leaving only the boots behind. A new exhibition space and a small cinema hall were opened as part of the complex. The exhibition "Stalin's Boots" takes visitors through the Hungarian Revolution and the fall of communism in that country in 1989/90. year. In the cinema hall, it is possible to watch the film "The Life of an Agent", directed by Gabor Zygmond Papa, which deals with the methods of the Hungarian secret police from 1949 to 1989.
These three memorial complexes speak of completely different periods of Hungary's recent history - about which there are numerous controversies even today. However, unlike the area of the former Yugoslavia, where the victors destroy every trace of their predecessors, especially when it comes to street names and monuments, the Hungarians have found a way to make their own culture of memory unique in Eastern Europe.
