Communist Crimes of Complicity

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was honored to host a fireside chat with Professor Amos N. Guiora on Communist Crimes of Complicity: Collaborators, Bystanders, and Enablers in Communist Countries.

Moderated by Eric Patterson, VOC’s President and CEO, the discussion explored how communist regimes enhance their control over people’s lives by encouraging collaboration, pitting citizens against one another, and how the threat of punishment transforms citizens into passive bystanders.

Dr. Amos Guiora, a professor at The University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law, directs the Bystander Initiative and has written extensively on his own family’s experiences during the Holocaust and in communist Eastern Europe. In this special conversation at the VOC Museum, Professor Guiora focused on collaboration and enablement of communism’s crimes. This topic is of historical interest when one thinks about the unresolved crimes of the Cold War era; but it is also of interest to those who yearn for democratic transitions in Cuba, China, North Korea, Venezuela, and elsewhere. How should collaboration be dealt with after the fall of a communist regime?

Stay tuned for the full event recording.