The reign of terror of the Arrow Cross Party – Shoes on the Danube Bank, Budapest

Fact of the Hungarian figure „Brick Factory in Obuda – The Holocaust in Hungary”

Part of the „The Holocaust” topic

On October 15, 1944, Miklós Horthy, the Governor of Hungary, failed to pull the country out of the war. Subsequently, the far-right, anti-Semitic Arrow Cross Party came to power, and party leader Ferenc Szálasi proclaimed himself as the „Leader of the Nation.” At that time, half of the country’s territory was already under Soviet occupation, making a final defeat inevitable. However, members of the Arrow Cross Party forced civilians and the military to continue their war efforts. They also systematically carried out the murder of the remaining Jews in Budapest, as well as Jewish people in army labor service battalions. By December, Jews were confined to the ‘great ghetto’ of Budapest. By Christmas, the siege around Budapest was complete, and groups of Arrow Cross Party members drove ghetto inhabitants in death marches to the Danube bank, where tens of thousands of Jews were shot into the icy water. Soviet troops liberated the ghetto on January 18, 1945.