Collections

On June 25, 2025, the VOC Museum is opened a temporary gallery on Operation Pedro Pan, the United States’ mission to save over 14,000 Cuban children from communism between 1960 and 1962. Several Pedro Pan children were involved in the design and execution of the temporary gallery. The exhibit was curated by Carmen Valdivia and made possible with the generous support of Maximo Alvarez.

Father Bryan O. Walsh, a young Irish-American Catholic priest and director of the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Miami, became aware of requests to provide temporary homes for Cuban refugee children in the U.S. In 1960, with the sudden influx of Cuban exiles, Walsh and other local leaders recognized the likelihood of an impending child welfare crisis. Meanwhile, James Baker, headmaster of Ruston Academy, an American school in Havana, was organizing a network of Cubans and expatriates to help get children out of Cuba. On December 12, 1960, Walsh and Baker met and launched the humanitarian program. Baker would get children out of Cuba and Walsh would provide shelter and care for those children with no relatives in the U.S.

The Victims of Communism Museum is our schoolhouse and the hub of our educational activity. Witness the rise of Communism, the terror of Lenin and Stalin, the growth of the tragic Gulag system, the eastward expansion of communism, and share in the inspiring stories of those fighting against the most deadly ideology man has ever created. For more information and to schedule a tour, visit vocmuseum.org.

Gallery I: The Rise of Communism
From Marx and Engels’ inception of Communist ideology to Lenin’s failed utopian promise, Gallery I envelops the visitor in a visceral first encounter with the violent revolutions born in Russia that swept across Europe starting with Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution. No one anticipated that the effects of Communism in Europe would last until the end of the 20th century. Viewers will be introduced to The Communist Manifesto, a tiny political pamphlet which would become the source of suffering for so many.

Gallery II: Stalin’s Terror
In Gallery II, visitors will come face to face with the heroes that fought against Communist oppression as well as the victims of its crimes. Joseph Stalin’s rise to power is presented alongside the gruesome stories of mass deportation to—and suffering within—the Gulag, described as a “meat grinder” by one of the most outspoken and famous Russian dissidents and forced labor camp survivors, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. Visitors will witness how starvation, deprivation, imprisonment, and the murder of millions became banal under Stalin’s reign of Terror. They will also hear from dissidents and victims, including Cardinal József Mindszenty, Milada Horáková, Witold Pilecki, and Natalia Talanchuk. This gallery will illuminate the truths concerning the irreversible effects of the Communist ideology, warn against repeating history, and remember the deadly crimes of Communism.

Gallery III: Miracles and Tears
Gallery III presents the arduous struggle for freedom by those who led the resistance and kept the flame of liberty alive. Visitors will meet Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Armando Valladares, Wei Jingsheng, and Václav Havel. Next, visitors will have the chance to learn about the disastrous escalation of Communism and how it spread throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. While 1989, the “year of miracles,” saw the fall of Communism in the Eastern Bloc, this gallery will also honor those today who must still fight against Communism in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam.

Anteroom: Remember Us
Remember the heroes, the dissidents, and the freedom fighters. Remember those who have fought, shed blood, and died. Remember those who have stood against and continue to stand against Communism. Together, let us commemorate the more than 100 million victims and the more than 1.5 billion still oppressed under Communism around the world today.

The Cuban contemporary art exhibition “The Veil of Silence” was held at the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States from October 27^th to November 15^th, 2021. This exhibition was supported by the Latin American Programs office of Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and was co-organized with Umbrella Art Foundation.

100 million victims of communism, 10 decades of dissent. Join VOC as we bear witness to those who have stood against the destructive ideology of communism through art in our collection, “Decades of Dissent.” From interbellum Poland and post-War America, to Cold War Germany and modern-day Hong Kong, artistic expressions of dissent have been critical to combating the communist threat. Throughout the past 100 years, dissident artists wielded their pencils, pens, and brushes, often in spite of violent repression, to depict the uncomfortable truths of communism that words struggle to describe. Their works immortalize the horrors of communism in practice, the despair of its victims, and the bravery of its critics.

Though it has been thirty years since the Iron Curtain was cast open and the Berlin Wall reduced to rubble, billions of people across the world are enshrouded in the dark shadow of communism, and dissident artists remain steadfast in their pursuit of holding communism to account for the misery it has proven to sow time and time again. Now more than ever, the free world should reflect on their works, and let them inspire us to affirm our commitment to those around the world, past and present, who toil under communist oppression: that no matter the depth of the darkness surrounding them, they shall never be forgotten.

ADVISORY: THIS CONTENT MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL AGES.

On the morning of November 9, 1989, it was unthinkable that the Berlin Wall would fall that evening. For nearly three decades, the Wall had stood as a symbol of a Europe divided between communist totalitarianism and free nations.

Yet the resilience of the peoples of the Captive Nations and the courage of dissidents in the face of tyranny relentlessly chipped away at the Iron Curtain and brought about its dramatic fall. Free people everywhere celebrated the inextinguishable desire for liberty that brought about the collapse of communism in Europe and the historic reunification of Germany.

With this collection, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation remembers the victims, celebrates the heroes, and is dedicated to preserving freedom and democracy in the 21st century.

ADVISORY: THIS CONTENT MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL AGES.

The Gulag Collection is a unique collection of 50 paintings by Ukrainian artist and Gulag survivor Nikolai Getman, who spent eight years in Siberia and then worked for 40 years to create this stunning visual chronicle of the Gulag. “I undertook the task,” Getman explained, “because I was convinced that it was my duty to leave behind a testimony to the fate of millions of prisoners who died and who should not be forgotten.”

Born in Kharkov, Ukraine, in December 1917, Nikolai Getman began drawing at an early age and became a professional artist after graduating from the Kharkov Art College. He served with the Red Army in the Second World War and saw military action. Following his discharge in October 1945, Getman was with other artists when one of them drew a mocking picture of Stalin on a piece of cigarette paper. The whole group was quickly arrested for anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation. Getman was sentenced under Article 58 of the Criminal Code to ten years’ imprisonment and five years’ suppression of civil rights. He spent eight years in one of the most notorious camps of the Gulag, Kolyma, located in the Russian Far East. He was finally freed in August 1953.

From the day he was released, Getman began painting a series of pictures from memory about life and death in the Gulag. Because the Gulag was a forbidden topic, even under Stalin’s successors, he had to work in secret, telling no one what he was doing, not even his wife. It was not until 1993 that the paintings were publicly exhibited in Russia. After a long illness, Nikolai Getman died in Russia in 2004, at the age of 86, but his haunting pictures of the Gulag Archipelago, the biggest and most deadly prison in the history of man, remain with us.