One of the world’s saddest sights is found in the Jewish quarter of Budapest

Sue Williams said that Budapest is one of the world’s saddest sights taking into consideration the many Jews who were killed here during the horrible days of WWII. But she added that the old Jewish quarter of the town, once so deserted, is now one of the hippest bohemian areas of the city, full of smart cafes, restaurants, boutiques, street art, and bars.

Stuff.co.nz’s article starts with the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial, a powerful place to one of the most despicable events of Word War II, when members of the Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross Party ordered many thousands of their Jewish countrymen to take off their shoes before shooting them dead, leaving their bodies to crumble into the river. “They come in all shapes and sizes, from workers’ boots to smart businessmen’s shoes, from dainty court high heels to a pair of children’s tiny lace-ups, today filled with a tangle of bright yellow buttercups,” the New Zealand author writes. More than half of Budapest’s Jewish population perished in the Holocaust.

She then mentions the

heroes who helped even in times of great danger.

There is Carl Lutz, the Swiss vice-consul who saved an estimated 60,000 Hungarian Jews, by issuing them with documents to allow them to emigrate, and hiding others in protected houses for which he claimed diplomatic immunity. “Whoever saves a life is considered to have saved an entire world,” the bronze sculpture commemorating his actions says.

And there is the Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, who saved about 20,000 Jews by issuing Swedish passports and sheltering them in safe houses. He once stopped a train on its way to Auschwitz to hand out passports, under Nazi fire, through the windows.