Memorial of Forced Labourers in Teleki Square

Sculptor: Dan Reisinger
Text: Hédi Szepes
Photos: József Hajdú

On April 17th, this work of art made by Dan Reisinger, a Hungarian-born artist and designer living in Israel to commemorate forced labourers dragged away from here in László Teleki Square, Józsefváros. The square itself has a symbolic significance. Trains loaded with the deported people left from the nearby railway station: people destined for forced labour followed this route to uncertainty, their death. One of the frozen sculptured shadow-figures of the composition is the father of the sculptor himself. The sculpture contains a total of nine characters with hunched shoulders, staring at the ground in front of them to symbolize exile and humiliation. The inscription on the granite was translated into three languages: Hungarian, Hebrew and English: „In memory of the Hungarian Jewish victims and survivors who had been transported as forced labourers, 1939-1945”.