Conceived by film director Can Togay, he created it on the east bank of the Danube River with sculptor Gyula Pauer [hu] to honour the Jews who were massacred by fascist Hungarian militia belonging to the Arrow Cross Party in Budapest during the Second World War.

At three points are cast iron signs, with the following text in Hungarian, English, and Hebrew: "To the memory of the victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944–1945.

During World War II, Valdemar Langlet, head of the Swedish Red Cross in Budapest, with his wife Nina, and later the diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and 250 colleagues were working around the clock to save the Jewish population from being sent to Nazi concentration camps; this figure later rose to approximately 400.

At midnight, Karoly Szabo and 20 policemen with drawn bayonets broke into the Arrow Cross house and rescued everyone (see also front page of 1947 newspaper below).

[8] Erwin K. Koranyi, a psychiatrist in Ottawa, wrote about the night of 8 January 1945 in his Dreams and Tears: Chronicle of a Life (2006), "in our group, I saw Lajos Stoeckler" and "The police holding their guns at the Arrowcross cutthroats.

[12] In September 2014, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that several bronze shoes had been stolen from the Danube Holocaust memorial, citing the Budapest Beacon.