[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 43, Number 24 (Monday, June 18, 2007)]
[Pages 793-795]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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

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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 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 Vitsula 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 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 freedom's 
cause, we will ensure that a future American President does not have to 
stand

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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.