By Nicole Russell
Thursday, April 23, 2015
When you think of a recent example of wartime oppression,
typically the Holocaust comes to mind. How could it not? The atrocious death
toll, the inhumane death camps and the victorious end to World War II are still
prevalent subjects in books, film, and on college campuses.
But what about Soviet Communism? Some estimate that under
Joseph Stalin’s regime, 20 million people were murdered. Even more
mind-boggling: Technology gurus had been making telephone calls from mobile
phones for ten years when Soviet Communists were still forcing millions of
people to work in slave labor camps under unimaginably brutal conditions by the
time our Allies forced that regime to end.
What of those communism touched? The Victims of Communism
Memorial Foundation preserves the stories of those who’ve lived under communist
regimes, now in the form of several short online videos—and they are as
horrifying as they are hopeful.
What Life Is Like in Communist Countries
Founded in 1994, the foundation’s mission is simple but
powerful: To educate this and future generations about the ideology, history,
and legacy of communism. Through its Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, over the
years the foundation has honored dissidents against communism, including
recipients such as Pope John Paul II. Two years after President George W. Bush
dedicated a memorial to remembering the victims of communism, the foundation
launched several exhibits online. These showcase various expert-authored essays
on communism, maps, timelines, and, most recently, a 3D interactive Gulag,
demonstrating what life might have been like in a camp.
The Foundation estimates there are 100,000,000 victims of
communism, but until now, it was nearly impossible to convey their experience
in one place, save for a few books and documentaries here and there, and
especially in brief, simple, layman’s terms. Many high-school textbooks are
leaving out or rearranging big chunks of communist history. The Foundation’s
Witness Project fills those gaps entirely, and in a way that’s as appealing to
older generations as it is to younger.
The Witness Project is a collection of online videos that
marry history textbook and novel, war movie and documentary. The roughly
five-minute videos tell one person’s specific experience dealing with
communism. Men and women, wealthy and poor, they hail from Hungary, China,
Vietnam, and Ukraine, among others. Their stories are as unbelievable as they
are fascinating, as chilling as they are powerful. Their goal is as obvious as
the truth in the stories they tell: People must understand the horrors of
communism to avoid repeating them.
Survivors of Communism Tell Their Stories
One woman’s story is particularly brutal. Jinhye Jo was
born in North Korea. With no food to feed his starving family, her father
attempted to escape to China. North Korean officials caught and killed him,
then lied to her family about how he died. Later, her mother was nearly beat to
death for speaking poorly of the North Korean government. The video concludes
with Jo’s sad words: “I want to say to the American people. Don’t think the
North Korean government is like you or I…They are like the devil.”
The project’s first video is about the life of Daniel
Magay. He gives us a brief but compelling glimpse into what life was like when
shaped by communism in Hungary. Magay grew up in a wealthy family, the son of a
landowner. But then Russia occupied the country and, he says, “Everything
turned upside down.”
Magay describes the regime this way: “Under the communist
system, they started developing the Hungarian KGB. The people who were willing
to compromise themselves became a part of the system. My father did not
compromise himself.” His father paid a price for this courage. His family was
forced from their home and “friends” of the government watched him night and
day. Magay won a gold medal for fencing in the 1956 Olympics in Australia, and
decided not to return home, but to seek refuge in the United States. Still, the
scars of communism remain. “I hated the system. I felt it took my soul.”
Short but powerful history lessons at the touch of a
fingertip: what better way to educate the next generation about a political
system that destroyed so many people? Hope, it seems, appears in many different
ways.
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