For those who do not know, these shoes were placed here to memorialize Jewish people who were murdered along the Danube during WWII. Before being executed by Arrow Cross militiamen, they were required to take off their shoes. Upon being shot their bodies fell into the freezing water. Overall, some 20,000 people, many of whom were forced to live in the Budapest Ghetto, were killed in this fashion between December 1944 and January 1945. It is simply not a monument to shoes.