VOC Museum Reviewed in The Washington Examiner

Don’t miss this must-read new review of the Victims of Communism Museum by John Sciortino in the Washington Examiner.

A shoestring charity is blowing against this ill wind [of socialism]. Founded in 1993 and operating out of a small-but-movingly-effective museum in downtown Washington, D.C., the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s mission is to educate younger generations about the sordid history of Marxist socialism (“the deadliest ideology in history”), to “expose the lies of Marxism for the naïve who say they are willing to give collectivism another chance,” and to “rededicate our free society based on individual liberty, free enterprise, the rule of law, democratic self-government, and human rights.”

The foundation also researches and exposes human rights abuses in present-day communist and socialist regimes, such as China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, Vietnam, and Venezuela. The Foundation’s team includes numerous members with painful, first-hand experience of communist and socialist regimes, who meet with students and other museum visitors and powerfully tell their stories.

Just one illustrative example is Rosa Maria Paya, a fearless human rights and democracy activist, whose father, Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Paya, was murdered by the regime in 2012.

During a recent visit to the museum, Foundation CEO Dr. Eric Patterson told me that his dream is to live in a world in which wearing a T-shirt with Che Guevera’s face is as appalling as would be one with Adolf Hitler’s, and the hammer and sickle was as repugnant as the swastika.

That’s a worthy cause indeed, and an especially timely one.