The lights on the Danube enchant, ripples of light dancing as if no dark history has ever touched this place. Yesterday, we boarded the river cruise boat, our room facing the waters of the Danube and Buda Hill. Filled with joy from the lights and the joy of gathering with my sister and her husband, Bruce and I were excited about our upcoming voyage on waters and through lands we’ve never explored.
But there was also a somberness. Today we had toured the old Jewish Quarter. Our guide, a young Jewish woman, explained that her parents had endured the Russian occupation, and one of her grandmothers died in Auschwitz. She told us that Hungary has been on the losing side for 500 years as she led us over cobble-stoned streets through dilapidated buildings, where 70,000 Jews had been walled in during World War II. As many as 100 people died each day and were buried behind the synagogue in a mass grave.
We walked through Ruin Bars, now occupying what is left of old Jewish homes—bars furnished with old furniture left behind and attracting young people from all over. Andrea explained that many Hungarians want to buy their homes and stay put, something they were deprived of during the German and Soviet occupations, so they purchase apartments but often cannot afford to renovate them. Too many of these apartments are being bought up for remodeling and turned into Airbnbs, like the one Bruce and I stayed in during our first days in Budapest.
Earlier in the week, we walked along the shore of the Danube near the ship and beneath the parliament building, which glittered now in the dark like a jewel. An art installation of sixty pairs of `bronze shoes commemorated the 3500 people bound together in threes, the middle person shot before the three fell into the freezing Danube during the winter of 1944-1945. Many of us stood in shock, some crying, as we viewed the replicas of the shoes men, women, and children were forced to leave behind before they were executed because leather and shoes were valuable and scarce. About a third were Jews, while the rest were Roma and political dissidents. The Nazi Arrow Cross Party, which occupied Hungary for a brief time during this period, was responsible.
It is easy to think this violence happens somewhere else, and yet, I have seen the footage of the January 6, 2020, storming of Congress and the craziness of the masses. I know this is not something that just happens in other places. I see pictures and videos of ICE agents tearing children away from their mothers and throwing women and the elderly to the ground as they arrest them and take them to detention centers, where the conditions are so horrible that people die.
And so I ponder in this season of Darkness: Is there light that can return in this awareness of such evil? And what might this awareness exact of us?
Art Installation: Shoes on the Danube