Art is powerful. Things can be told with a glimpse that make one’s chest heave. In Budapest, during World War II, the Nazis and their Arrow Cross militia captured people – Jewish people – and brought them to the edge of the Danube River. The Nazis asked them to remove their shoes, then shot them – the bodies dropping like leaves into the river. The number of those killed, on the Pest side of the River, and elsewhere in the city between December 1944 and January 1945 is 20,000. The Red Army of the Soviet Union liberated Budapest in February.
