New Museum Honors Victims of Communism

Elizabeth Spalding, founding director of the Victims of Communism Museum. (York Du/The Epoch Times)

“Communism is premised on the state,” Elizabeth Spalding says. “And the state is above all. There’s no transcendent truth. ... Everything must serve or be made to serve the state. ... All life is cheap in comparison to the [Communist] Party.”

In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek spoke with Spalding, the founding director of the new Victims of Communism Museum in Washington. It’s the first museum in America honoring the tens of millions of people killed by communism in the past century, as well as the many millions more who suffered and continue to suffer under communist dictatorships.

She is also the vice chair of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Jan Jekielek: Why a Victims of Communism Museum? And why aren’t there more of them?

Elizabeth Spalding: We’re the first Victims of Communism Museum in the United States. Other museums around the world are dedicated to victims of communism, but sometimes just for the people of that particular country. We’re focused on telling the story of all the victims of communism.

Some people still don’t understand that there are victims of communism. They might not even understand what communism is. And there are people defending communism. We want to make sure that at this museum, people can learn about communism and the atrocities it has perpetuated for a century in more than 30 countries. Five countries still have communist regimes, and they’re making more victims all the time.

Mr. Jekielek: Tell me about the number of victims.

Ms. Spalding: More than 100 million people have been killed by communism in different states since the Bolshevik Revolution. But we must also count as victims those who are living and who lived under communism.

Today, more than 1.5 billion people live under communism in China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba. These people are victims in that they don’t get to choose freely in their lives. We need to understand that not only the people killed by communism are victims, but also those forced to live under communism, even as they resist.

Mr. Jekielek: In Poland, my mother got an offer to join the Communist Party and refused, and that changed her life. Why would saying no restrict someone’s life?

Ms. Spalding: If you want to rise in the ranks, you have to be a Party member. Your choices are limited, unless you serve the state. Your mother, thank God, decided to resist. That meant she hit a ceiling as to what she could do in Poland. But it also meant, I’m sure, she was subject to persecution.

A lot of people decide to join the Party. It’s easier. Just go along and get along. Others decide to try to get out. I understand that’s what happened with your mom, which is a great story. The Communist Party wanted her to live differently, and she said no. A major theme here at the Victims of Communism Museum is resistance.

Mr. Jekielek: You grew up very aware of the realities of communism. Tell me how you ended up here.

Ms. Spalding: I grew up in a pro-freedom, anti-communist household where my parents taught me about the dignity of every human being. I met people who had resisted and had gotten out. Some had swum in shark-infested waters to get away. Some had burrowed under barbed wire fencing. I met boat people from Vietnam and people from Cuba. Growing up, I heard stories from people around the world who had escaped from communism.

Skip ahead a few years, after the Berlin Wall fell, and I was talking with my parents about how people were forgetting these things.

This was of grave concern to my parents, who had fought communism their whole lives. We were having brunch one Sunday after church, just a couple of months after the wall fell. My mother said, “You know, there should be some sort of memorial and museum to the victims of communism.” My father said, “That’s a great idea.” So he took his napkin and wrote down “victims of communism, a memorial and museum.”

That was the start of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which was then chartered by a unanimous act of Congress in 1993 and signed into law by President [Bill] Clinton. For a number of years, [the foundation] was very busy, all people working for free, including my father, Lee Edwards, who’s worked all of his life on these kinds of issues. Finally, they raised enough money for a memorial that’s on federal parkland in Washington, D.C. It was dedicated in 2007 by President [George W.] Bush.

It’s a nonpartisan group, bringing together Americans and people from around the world who understand that the victims of communism should be remembered. And then they wanted a museum. There were some roadblocks along the way. Raising money isn’t easy. Finally, several years ago, some more, bigger donations came in, not enough to do a museum the size of the Holocaust [Memorial] Museum, but to do something.

That’s when we decided to do what we’re calling a jewel box museum—something that tells the story about the victims of communism in a small space, but does it well. I spent the better part of two years researching and working with other scholars, but also writing and editing everything that people see on the walls in the museum.

Mr. Jekielek: I want to touch on the Holodomor, when millions of Ukrainians starved to death because of Joseph Stalin’s policy. At the time, Walter Duranty of The New York Times was sending back glowing reports that everything was great, when millions of people were being starved.

Ms. Spalding: This year marks the 90th anniversary of that horrible communist-made famine. The Holodomor—death by hunger is what it means—killed millions.

The numbers are always hard to count, but scholars in recent years have settled on about 4 million for the Holodomor. The Ukrainians could have fed themselves and everybody else, except the communists said, “No, we need these quotas of grain met,” and they were impossible quotas. They took their crops and livestock, and consigned them to death. This is another truth of communism: Life is very cheap to them.

Mr. Jekielek: Why is life cheap under communism?

Ms. Spalding: Communism is premised on the state, and the state is above all. There’s no transcendent truth. So if you say that the state is the be-all and end-all, then everything must serve or be made to serve the state. That’s what happens under communism. All life is cheap in comparison to the Party.

Mr. Jekielek: So why do so many in the West have a favorable view of this ideology?

Ms. Spalding: A lot of it is ignorance. We don’t teach it in our schools. And a lot of people learn that communism isn’t so bad or hasn’t really been tried. They don’t know the truth about its ideology, history, or legacy. They don’t see the destructive part of communism. Many people don’t realize that the Soviets who were our Allies in World War II were doing things as bad as the Nazis, and that horrible things are still going on under communist regimes.

Mr. Jekielek: It’s shocking to me how few teachers and textbooks are explaining these things to students.

Ms. Spalding: It is shocking. We’ve spearheaded Victims of Communism Day, which has been adopted by a handful of states. Our goal, we hope, is that all 50 states will have a Victims of Communism Day.

And some of the states that have adopted a Victims of Communism Day are now talking about offering a curriculum. Florida has passed a couple of pieces of legislation requiring education on communism and its victims. We also offer a summer seminar for ongoing certification for teachers. It’s open to middle school and high school teachers, whether they teach in public school, private school, or homeschool. We’re teaching them so that they understand what happened and what is happening in regard to communism.

Mr. Jekielek: We have a very popular and powerful “American Thought Leaders” episode with one of your witnesses, Nal Oum, one of the few medical doctors to survive the Cambodian genocide.

Ms. Spalding: Every high school graduate should know what the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot did. They should know about that genocide. Communism sets up a system demanding that people conform, and imprisoning people in the most horrible circumstances to be reeducated.

Mr. Jekielek: What do you say to people who believe it can never happen here?

Ms. Spalding: We’re a country and a people based on rights—rights [given] from nature and nature’s God, as the Declaration of Independence says. If we allow somebody to define that for us, then it could happen here. People in other communist countries didn’t think it would happen there, but then it happened.

We have to realize that freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and the press are precious and can be either given away or taken away if we don’t understand what they are and live them appropriately and responsibly.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity