By Jack Wolfsohn
Sunday, June 12, 2022
Washington is getting a new and vital addition to its archipelago of museums in the coming days: the Victims of Communism Museum. Founded by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), the building will be open to the general public on Monday.
The Victims of Communism Museum will be the only one of its kind in the world that explains communism’s past along with its influence throughout Europe, Asia, and South America. Lee Edwards, co-founder and chairman emeritus of the foundation, told National Review: “We see the museum as a cornerstone of the national education program and campaign. We see it as an important part of our mission to educate young Americans . . . about the history, legacy, and ideology of communism.” Lee underscored that VOC has a clear political agenda: “We feel that once we have done that, we will have been able to make them understand that they will not want to vote for a socialist and that communism is not only bad but evil.”
According to Edwards, the goal of educating young Americans about communism is bipartisan. The VOC reaches out to both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. While Edwards doesn’t see communism as an imminent threat to America now, he argued that its variants are on the rise: “When I read that 70 percent of Millennials would vote for a socialist, that’s a warning flag. So we must act now to stop that. The way to do that is to educate not only students but also teachers.” Accordingly, VOC runs a program that educates teachers about how to instruct students on communism. Edwards thinks it is vital to reach young people before they go off to college. He also mentioned how VOC was encouraged to see Ron DeSantis sign into law H.B. 395, which designates November 7 as “Victims of Communism Day” and adds a curriculum to U.S. government courses that educates students about communist regimes around the world and their leaders. “It’s very important. And we’re spinning out from that and talking to other governors and state boards of education about doing the same thing,” Edwards told National Review.
Former U.S. ambassador to Estonia and VOC trustee Dr. Aldona Z. Wos, who lived under communism in Poland, explained the importance of educating young Americans today: “We need to know the facts about the failed policies of communism so that we do not repeat these mistakes for the future.” Wos gave the example of how the communist Polish government subsidized vodka, making a liter of vodka cheaper than a liter of milk. The intention was to keep the population inebriated to make resistance less likely. Wos also recalled the food shortages she faced as a girl in Poland: “As a young adolescent living in Poland, I would be coming home from medical school and, when stopping at the store to buy something to eat, I would find empty shelves. We had food rations. . . . The shelves were empty in an agricultural country that helped feed itself and the rest of the world.”
The first gallery that visitors will see when they step into the museum has a revolution theme. The gallery explains The Communist Manifesto, the Bolshevik Revolution, and Vladimir Lenin’s rise to power in Russia.
Visitors then enter the second gallery, where the theme is repression. It “gives you a sense of the individual,” said Elizabeth Spalding, VOC vice chairman and founding director of the Victims of Communism Museum. This gallery covers the era of Joseph Stalin, from the 1920s through World War II. On one wall are three large displays of victims of communism: Two of the three victims were executed in show trials. As visitors turn around, they are confronted with pictures of the youngest victims of communism. One of the boys featured was a victim of the Holodomor, Stalin’s genocide in Ukraine that starved to death between 3.3 million and 3.9 million Ukrainians. On one of the walls, there is a video where viewers learn about the gulag system in communist countries. The purpose of the film, according to Spalding, is to emphasize the fact that the gulag — a network of forced-labor camps where prisoners were often worked to death — was not specific to the Soviet Union but also was used in other communist countries such as China (which still operates forced-labor camps today).
Finally, visitors enter the third gallery, where the theme is resistance. This covers the post–World War II era through the present. Visitors read about Mao Zedong’s murderous campaigns, the Prague Spring, and “The Killing Fields of Cambodia,” among other displays. Museumgoers will learn about the lives of those who are living under communism today. Visitors will have the opportunity to use an interactive screen that guides one through the day-to-day choices that people living in communist countries today are forced to make as well as the outcomes of their choices.
Merita McCormack, who fled communist Albania, spoke to reporters during a pre-opening visit to the museum and described her experiences living under communist repression. McCormack said she couldn’t vote, move to a new home, or go to the high school of her choice because her grandfather was a kulak — one of the relatively wealthy farmers who were discriminated against by the communists. Her mother’s family’s home was confiscated by the government:
It was daily political bullying. You would go out in the street, and my classmates would either speak to us or say to others that we don’t belong. Basically, my life changed forever. . . . It was a daily constant reminder that you don’t belong, that you are not good, that you are no one.
McCormack recalled that when she came to America in 1994, she saw politicians on television spewing propaganda that sounded just like what she heard in Albania. McCormack voiced frustration that the threat of communism is not being taken seriously enough in America today. How should Americans fight back against these ideologies? McCormack puts the onus on parents to educate their children but also says fundamental freedoms — of speech, of religion — must be respected.
“Tell the stories about communism and fight . . . . We must not be afraid to tell the truth,” she said.
The museum aims to do that. And it would be difficult for any young American to come away idealizing communism after a visit there.
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