VOC at the PEMC Annual Conference

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was honored to participate in the annual meeting of the Platform for European Memory and Conscience in Katowice, Poland. VOC is one of over 70 museums and related organizations that make up the Platform.

VOC thanks our host, the Silesian Center of Freedom and Solidarity, for exceptional hospitality and the moving visit to the site of communist brutality at the Wujek Mine.

During the conference, VOC President and CEO Dr. Eric Patterson spoke on the need for two types of sites for remembering the victims of communism. He argued that there is a need to preserve some sites of sacrifice, which we often call “sacred sites,” such as battlefields where heroes died or scenes of criminal atrocity, such as a KGB prison or a Gulag. We cannot, and should not, preserve every such spot — some are very distant and obscure. Others can be rehabilitated for productive use. We also need to preserve places like Normandy and Auschwitz as places of testimony. The Wujek Mine in Katowice is such a place, where communists used tanks against striking miners.

At the same time, we need to create many new locations to tell these stories in a geographically convenient way. We have to go to where the people are! The VOC Museum in Washington is one such place, located in a strategic location.