Culture Challenge: Communism’s Forgotten Victims

An interesting article from Rebecca Hagelin about the MANY victims of Communism throughout the world over the years! Click the links near the bottom!

Culture Challenge: Communism’s Forgotten Victims
It's not often that I will write about issues of national security or national freedom in this e-newsletter. I normally like to focus on offering help for every day problems you might be facing in your family. However, given that this generation of children has no personal memory of a momentous historic event that affects all of our lives, and millions upon millions around the world, I thought it is important to address the anniversary of this great event: The fall of the Soviet Union.I hope you will make time to discuss the topic with your own kids so they can understand just how blessed they are to live in a free society. Perhaps you can use my Culture Challenge of the Week as a discussion guide, and visit one or more of the Web sites below with your child.
Culture Challenge of the Week: Communism’s Forgotten Victims
Three summers ago, I witnessed the dancing eyes and exuberant smiles of fellow humans who were tasting freedom for the very first time. I was on a Florida barrier island when some three-dozen very lucky Cubans escaped their captors, beat the odds in dangerous seas, and finally stepped into freedom on America’s shore. It seemed that they came from another time--almost like characters from an old black-and-white movie about war and oppression. As I processed what I was witnessing, I began to realize that they were flesh-and-blood representatives of millions like them who have suffered in the clutches of communist regimes. From the Soviet gulags, to China’s Tiananmen Square, to North Korea, to the tiny island of Cuba and other places in-between, 100 million men, women and children around the world have been victimized by communist thugs. Just 90 miles from our own border a third generation of Cuban people remains captive to the same brutal regime that terrorized their grandparents. Americans are often oblivious to the tragic reality that people in our own backyard, and around the world still suffer and die under brutal communist oppression.
The news media is all but silent about the bloody history while propagandists like Michael Moore get rich from extolling a radical socialist agenda and portraying the oppressive communist systems as benevolent.
Our children’s textbooks are strangely void of even a mention of the 14 million political prisoners, who either barely clung to life or died in inhumane Soviet gulags. Meanwhile, every year, thousands of Cubans are still imprisoned and severely punished in dank jails. Thousands of others leave their loved ones in the dark of night, slip into home-made rafts, and brave the deadly Florida Straits in search of freedom. Most Americans don’t realize that we are one month away from the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. I will always remember how stunning it was to see the wall come tumbling down. But, I am just as stunned when teenagers and young adults have no idea just how significant that day was -- or just how wrong it is that 20 years later communism still has a strangle hold on many of our fellow humans. Ignorance may be bliss, but it can also be deadly. If we do not pass on the truth about communism’s bloody history, and if our culture continues to ignore the lingering infection and festering of communist ideology and brutality on mankind, we are in grave danger of falling victim to either it or one of its numerous insidiously evil ideological cousins.
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is dedicated to preserving the stories of real people who suffered, and continue to suffer, under communism's fist. Dr. Lee Edwards, chairman of the foundation -- and a powerful voice for the oppressed, a noted historian, and a perfect gentleman if ever there was one -- seeks to save future generations from oppression by honoring those who have stood in the face of it. Dr. Edward’s latest effort to share the horrible truth about communism includes a display of deeply disturbing paintings of human misery by 14-year gulag survivor, artist Nikolai Getman. The forlorn faces and eyes in these paintings are haunting and vacant -- a stark contrast to the joyful eyes of those I met on the beach that day. The Gulag Collection is on display through November 9 at The Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, and is free and open to the public.

For more information on how to view the collection visit www.Heritage.org.

You and your children can learn about those who stood up to communism, how to pay tribute to them, and how to help those who continue to suffer by visiting www.VictimsOfCommunism.org and the Global Museum on Communism at www.GlobalMuseumOnCommunism.org.

If you care to read more about the day I witnessed those Cuban refugees enjoy their first hours of freedom, visit my Web site where you can access my column archives. I was actually the only journalist on-site when they arrived, and had the incredible honor of filing the first news story about their successful landing. It was truly a life-changing experience for them -- and for me!