History of Budapest shot them along the banks of the Danube and threw their bodies into the river. Soviet forces captured Budapest on February 13, 1945. More than 100,000 Jews remained in the city at time of capture. Upon retreating, the Germans also blew up all the Danube bridges as a way of hampering the progress of the Communist Red Army of the Soviets. A two-month-long siege of Budapest reduced the entire city, but mostly the Castle District to rubble, as it was assigned to the mostly Hungarian army with German leadership to defend and to "hold back". Most roofs in Budapest were
Budapest movement to the neighbouring agglomeration in Pest county, i.e., suburbanisation. In the last decades of the 20th century the political changes of 1989–90 (Fall of the Iron Curtain) concealed changes in civil society and along the streets of Budapest. The monuments of the dictatorship were removed from public places, into Memento Park. In the first 20 years of the new democracy, the development of the city was managed by its mayor, Gábor Demszky. Budapest, strategically placed at the centre of the Carpathian Basin, lies on an ancient route linking the hills of Transdanubia with the Great Plain. By road it