[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2007, Book I)]
[June 12, 2007]
[Pages 735-737]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks at the Victims of Communism Memorial Dedication
June 12, 2007
Thank you all for coming. Please be seated. Dr. Edwards, thanks for your kind words. Congressman Lantos, no better friend to freedom, by the way;
Congressman Rohrabacher, the same. Members
of the Czech and Hungarian Parliaments; Ambassadors; distinguished
guests; and more importantly, the survivors of Communist oppression: I'm
honored to join you on this historic day.
And here in the company of men and women who resisted evil and
helped bring down an empire, I proudly accept the Victims of Communism
Memorial on behalf of the American people.
The 20th century will be remembered as the deadliest century in
human history. And the record of this brutal era is commemorated in
memorials across this city. Yet until now, our Nation's Capital had no
monument to the victims of imperial communism, an ideology that took the
lives of an estimated 100 million innocent men, women, and children. So
it's fitting that we gather to remember those who perished at
communism's hands and dedicate this memorial that will enshrine their
suffering and sacrifice in the conscience of the world.
Building this memorial took more than a decade of effort, and its
presence in our Capital is a testament to the passion and determination
of two distinguished Americans: Lev Dobriansky, whose daughter Paula is
here--give your dad our best--and Dr. Lee Edwards. They faced setbacks and challenges along the way; yet
they never gave up, because in their hearts, they
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heard the voices of the fallen crying out, ``Remember us.''
These voices cry out to all, and they're legion. The sheer numbers
of those killed in communism's name are staggering, so large that a
precise count is impossible. According to the best scholarly estimate,
communism took the lives of tens of millions of people in China and the
Soviet Union and millions more in North Korea, Cambodia, Africa,
Afghanistan, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and other parts of the globe.
Behind these numbers are human stories of individuals with families
and dreams whose lives were cut short by men in pursuit of totalitarian
power. Some of communism's victims are well-known. They include a
Swedish diplomat named Raoul Wallenberg,
who saved 100,000 Jews from the Nazis, only to be arrested on Stalin's
orders and sent to Moscow's Lubyanka Prison, where he disappeared
without a trace. They include a Polish priest named Father Popieluszko,
who made his Warsaw church a sanctuary for the Solidarity underground,
and was kidnaped and beaten and drowned in the Vistula by the secret
police.
The sacrifices of these individuals haunt history, and behind them
are millions more who were killed in anonymity by communism's brutal
hand. They include innocent Ukrainians starved to death in Stalin's
Great Famine or Russians killed in Stalin's purges, Lithuanians and
Latvians and Estonians loaded onto cattle cars and deported to Arctic
death camps of Soviet communism. They include Chinese killed in the
Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Cambodians slain in Pol
Pot's Killing Fields, East Germans shot attempting to scale the Berlin
Wall in order to make it to freedom, Poles massacred in the Katyn
Forest, and Ethiopians slaughtered in the ``Red Terror,'' Miskito
Indians murdered by Nicaragua's Sandinista dictatorship, and Cuban
balseros who drowned escaping tyranny. We'll never know the names of all
who perished, but at this sacred place, communism's unknown victims will
be consecrated to history and remembered forever.
We dedicate this memorial because we have an obligation to those who
died to acknowledge their lives and honor their memory. The Czech writer
Milan Kundera once described the struggle
against communism as ``the struggle of memory against forgetting.''
Communist regimes did not--did more than take their victims' lives; they
sought to steal their humanity and erase their memory. With this
memorial, we restore their humanity, and we reclaim their memory. With
this memorial, we say of communism's innocent and anonymous victims:
``These men and women lived, and they shall not be forgotten.''
We dedicate this memorial because we have an obligation to future
generations to record the crimes of the 20th century and ensure they're
never repeated. In this hallowed place, we recall the great lessons of
the cold war: that freedom is precious and cannot be taken for granted;
that evil is real and must be confronted; and that given the chance, men
commanded by harsh and hateful ideologies will commit unspeakable crimes
and take the lives of millions.
It's important that we recall these lessons, because the evil and
hatred that inspired the death of tens of millions of people in the 20th
century is still at work in the world. We saw its face on September the
11th, 2001. Like the Communists, the terrorists and radicals who
attacked our Nation are followers of a murderous ideology that despises
freedom, crushes all dissent, has expansionist ambitions, and pursues
totalitarian aims. Like the Communists, our new enemies believe the
innocent can be murdered to serve a radical vision. Like the Communists,
our new enemies are dismissive of free peoples, claiming that those of
us who live in liberty are weak and lack the resolve to defend our free
way of life. And like the Communists, the followers of violent Islamic
radicalism are doomed to fail. By remaining steadfast in
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freedom's cause, we will ensure that a future American President does
not have to stand in a place like this and dedicate a memorial to the
millions killed by the radicals and extremists of the 21st century.
We can have confidence in the power of freedom because we've seen
freedom overcome tyranny and terror before. Dr. Edwards said President Reagan went to Berlin. He was clear in his
statement. He said, ``Tear down the wall,'' and 2 years later the wall
fell. And millions across Central and Eastern Europe were liberated from
unspeakable oppression. It's appropriate that on the anniversary of that
speech, that we dedicate a monument that reflects our confidence in
freedom's power.
The men and women who designed this memorial could have chosen an
image of repression for this space, a replica of the wall that once
divided Berlin, or the frozen barracks of the Gulag, or a killing field
littered with skulls. Instead, they chose an image of hope, a woman
holding a lamp of liberty. She reminds us of the victims of communism
and also of the power that overcame communism.
Like our Statue of Liberty, she reminds us that the flame for
freedom burns in every human heart, and that it is a light that cannot
be extinguished by the brutality of terrorists or tyrants. And she
reminds us that when an ideology kills tens of millions of people and
still ends up being vanquished, it is contending with a power greater
than death. She reminds us that freedom is the gift of our Creator;
freedom is the birthright of all humanity; and, in the end, freedom will
prevail.
I thank each of you who made this memorial possible for your service
in freedom's cause. I thank you for your devotion to the memory of those
who lost their lives to Communist terror. May the victims of communism
rest in peace. May those who continue to suffer under communism find
their freedom. And may the God who gave us liberty bless this great
memorial and all who come to visit her.
God bless.
Note: The President spoke at 10:35 a.m. In his remarks, he referred to
Lee Edwards, vice chairman, and Lev E. Dobriansky, chairman emeritus,
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.