This week’s White House statement infuriates communists the most

Dr. Lee Edwards, explores in Fox News the history and importance of National Captive Nations week, and remembering those victims suffering around the world:

“One presidential proclamation in particular infuriates the communists because it tells the truth about communism: Moscow was the center of an empire responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million victims since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Every U.S. president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Joe Biden has proclaimed the third week of July to be National Captive Nations Week. In the first proclamation, President Eisenhower condemned ‘the imperialistic and aggressive policies of Soviet communism’ and urged the American people to recommit their support of the “just aspirations” of the captive nations for freedom and national independence. 

Eisenhower did not mince words, declaring that communism had created ‘a vast empire’ that posed ‘a dire threat’ to America’s security and all the free peoples of the world. The word ’empire’ anticipated President Ronald Reagan’s reference to the Soviets’ ‘evil empire’ in a 1983 address. 

Attesting to the bipartisan nature of the proclamation, President John F. Kennedy declared that ‘this country must never recognize the situation behind the Iron Curtain as a permanent one but must… keep alive the hopes of freedom of the peoples of the captive nations.’

One president who understood full well the importance of Captive Nations Week was Reagan, who said in 1988: ‘On behalf of Vice President Bush and myself, this pledge we make to… all the peoples of the captive nations around the world: America will never forget your plight, and we will never cease to speak the truth [about communism].’

A little more than one year later, the Berlin Wall fell and the 100 million captive peoples behind the Iron Curtain were at last free after over four decades of communist captivity.”

Read the full article from Fox News.

Dr. Lee Edwards is Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.