Honoring the memory of over 100 million victims of communism

"To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” - Elie Wiesel, Night 



Friday, June 9th starting at 9:00am on the corner of Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues NW in Washington, DC for the tenth year there will be a Roll Call of Nations Wreath Laying Ceremony at the Victims of Communism Memorial.  This annual event is hosted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Government representatives of formerly captive nations, civil society groups and victims of communism will gather to honor the memory of the more than 100 million persons killed  by communism over the past century.

Communists massacred the Russian royal family in 1918

 Last year I was physically present and humbled to translate for Cuban dissidents Oscar Elías Biscet and  Sirley Ávila León at the Roll Call of Nations at the Victims of Communism Memorial.

Roll Call of Nations Wreath Laying Ceremony at Victims of Communism Memorial

 This year I will be unable to physically but will be there in spirit and lament that I will not be able to once again meet such great heroes of freedom as Mart Laar of Estonia and Vytautus Landsbergis of Lithuania.  They not only played crucial roles in the liberation of their perspective countries but have been steadfast champions for the freedom of Cuba.

Communists today celebrating a bloody and murderous legacy

 2017 has an important historic significance because it marks the 100th anniversary of a tragic event, the founding of the first communist dictatorship that murdered the Russian royal family, plunged Russia into what would be a bloody century of war, repression, manufactured famines and terror that claimed tens of millions of lives.  Children were not spared. Like their totalitarian Nazi counterparts the Communist Party of Great Britain will be celebrating this criminal enterprise.

Communists manufactured famines to liquidate class enemies started in the USSR

However the apologists for communism will downplay the human cost and the 1939 Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact where the Soviet Union, the first communist regime, allied itself with Nazi Germany to divide up Poland and usher in World War II.

German Nazi and Russian Communist soldiers greet one another in Poland (1939)

Think of it for a moment, over a 100 million lives over the span of a century. One million state engineered violent deaths a year for one hundred years. The death toll of communism can clearly be seen today rising in places like Venezuela, North Korea, and China but the killings although lower profile also happen in other communist regimes.

We owe it to both the victims of communism from the past and of today to remember them and denounce what has happened and is still happening now in order to finally bring an end to the communist death toll. Below is a partial list of the dead reaches 102.566 million dead.

Communist death toll (estimate)*

Soviet Union 61 million dead

Peoples Republic of China 35 million dead

Khmer Rouge (Cambodia) 2 million dead

Communist Vietnam 1.670 million dead

North Korea 1.663 million dead

Communist Ethiopia 725,000 dead

Communist Rumania 435,000 dead

Communist Cuba 73,000 dead

Please if you live in or near the nation's capitol then this Friday, June 9th at 9:00am join in this vigil for justice for victims of communism on the corner of Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues NW in Washington, DC. I'll hold a moment of silence at that time in remembrance of the victims. Either way please consider sending a tax deductible donation to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation because they are doing important work educating America's youth on the real nature of communism.



 *Source: HOW MANY DID COMMUNIST REGIMES MURDER? By R.J. Rummel