Today is Remembrance Sunday. Exactly 100 years since the end of WW1, and at 11 am we shall remember the dead by holding a two minute silence. Of course there now remain no more ex-combatants.
Now we tend to remember the 'old soldiers' from World War 11, where there were so many outrages committed, that it is difficult to highlight just one.
However, one that is very little known is that of Budapest, where Jewish women were taken by the Germans to the edge of the Danube, told to remove their shoes, and were callously shot. Their bodies falling into the river below. Around 20,000 women were murdered this way.
Artists Can Togay and Gyula Pauer have created this memorial (above), consisting of 60 pairs of cast-iron shoes, so that those poor tragic Hungarian women are never forgotten.
On 'Remembrance Day' we tend to think mostly of the British and Commonwealth soldiers who died during the two world wars, but there were countless more victims from other nations who also deserve to be in our thoughts.
Those poor innocent women are just one such group; victims of appalling, and senseless, German barbarity.
Let those victims (and their perpetrators) never be forgotten. RIP.
Yes; appalling, senseless and barbaric; I wonder about the mentality of the perpetrators.
ReplyDeleteI understand the rank and file squaddies justified their actions as simply following orders, but it must take a psychopath to pull the trigger on totally innocent non-combatants.
It's hard to believe that a regime could be responsible for the deaths of 6 Million people, simply because of their religion, but it happened within living memory. These poor women were just a fraction.
DeleteBeneath the surface sometimes the hatred still erupts, we always have to be more careful than many others, sounds paranoid but it is the reality.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly exists in the UK. I have personally seen huge Stars of David painted on the windows of Marks and Spencer's by a group of female left wing Hamas supporters. Disgraceful.
DeleteNice angle on the day. I read another post about the shoes in Budapest just yesterday. We saw the shoes in 2014 on the river bank. I took a rear view photo. The photo you have is really good and almost gives personality to those who wore the shoes.
ReplyDeleteI was under the impression that the shoes were a new work. Obviously not. The article I read didn't mention when they were made.
DeleteThe shoes are chilling and yet another reason that we must never forget. XXXX
ReplyDeleteIt looks to be a very poignant reminder of the horrors of war; although to call this 'war' is wrong. It was simply murder.
DeleteWars, and their side effects, will one fine day be the end of us. This Macron-Merkel European Army project is playing with fire. There will be a backlash and mutiny as in the First World War when Czech soldiers laid down their arms in October and returned to Prague. This should come as no surprise. Macron and the globalist idiocy cannot see it.
ReplyDeleteAnyone wishing to understand the relationship between the Germanic soul and the Jewish holocaust could do worse than start by reading the anti-Jewish writings of Martin Luther, which writings influenced AH and his cronies and eventually hundreds of millions of European fellow travelers.
I suspect this is why the UK would have nothing to do with an EU army.
DeleteTrump was probably correct reminding Macron how much the USA coughs-up to NATO, for the defence of Europe.
The shoes are such a sad and poignant memorial.
ReplyDeleteA chilling reminder. Very sad.
DeleteAnd the nightly torture, flesh to the bone, and murder of many Jews in 1933 in Berlin is also little known about but is written down now for all to see. The shoes in Budapest have been in place I believe since 2005.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't seen the shoes before. They are quite eerie. Those poor women.
DeleteBut the bad things have happened, we can't undo them only remember in great pomp and ceremony the lives lost so tragically.
ReplyDeleteThe Armistice ceremony in Paris was very good, one can only wish when heads of states get together that an understanding about real peace comes to the fore.
There seemed to be some tension between Trump and Macron, so I can only imagine that your wish didn't come true. Life is all so complicated.
DeleteWorld War Eleven? Have I missed something?
ReplyDeleteI thought it looked better that eye-eye.
DeleteOver 100 million people lost their lives to wars in the last century. Some of the people of Germany are but some of many inhuman slayers of people. The British Empire wasn't exactly blameless in its dealing with the countries it conquered and enslaved in the previous century. It is arguable that the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't deserve the terrible fate that awaited them. I appreciate that there is a difference in targetting a particular race or religion but, unfortunately, was ever thus.
ReplyDeleteThe 'Rape of Nanking' was possibly the most evil of all slaughters, and their killing continued. If Hiroshima helped bring an end to the Japanese barbarism, then I suppose it was warranted.
DeleteYes I do remember that. I watched a program about a Hungarian police man who had been there as a perpetrator denying that he had any involvement. Also what about the Rat Line through the Vatican?
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, the Vatican ordered all their European children's homes to hand over Jewish children to the Germans. They have a lot of blood on their hands.
DeleteAH never renounced his RC religion and the Vatican never asked him to. His infamous book translated as 'My Struggle' was not placed on the banned reading list which they had at that time.
DeleteAgree with your comments totally Cro but can we add to these the barbarity of the Japanese. My first husband was possibly (at 16) the youngest serving soldier (a band boy) to be taken prisoner in Thailand by the Japanese. He spent the rest of the war on the Death Railway and survived countless terrible diseases and witnessed hundreds of acts of sheer barbarity. He died in1991 after we had had thirty nine very happy years together.
ReplyDeleteWhat still sticks in my throat, Weaver, is that the Japanese people as a whole have never been made aware of the atrocities of their soldiers during the war. There has been no apology, and the majority of the population has never been made aware of what was done by their soldiers. At least the German people were marched through the concentration camps.
DeleteThis is also important to remember. Last year, San Francisco erected a monument in honor of the 'comfort women' used by the Japanese soldiers during the war. Our sister city, Osaka, then servered ties with us as a result.
DeleteI remember seeing that Rememberance piece of artwork portrayed in a news article a few years ago. It struck me as so very poignant, and of course no more so than at this time of the year.
ReplyDeleteJo in Auckland
It seems as if I'm the last person to see it. It's the thought that counts!
DeleteWonderful concept that goes straight to the heart.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly did to mine.
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