A VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS
By Rich Trzupek
100 Million Memories
In a city full of memorials, it�s not surprising that the dedication of another should pass quietly by. Yet, this particular memorial stands in tribute to more innocent victims than all the rest of the city�s memorials combined. More people should have noticed. How quickly we forget.
Last Tuesday�s dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C. was a by-partisan affair, as it should have been. Democratic Representative Tom Lantos, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, delivered the keynote address. President Bush, Senator Joe Lieberman and William F. Buckley participated as well.
No one recorded the presence of George Clooney, Michael Moore, or Cindy Sheehan, or any of that crowd. Isn�t that surprising? You would think that the people who so loudly lament the loss of each life lost in Iraq and Afghanistan would have a little room in their hearts to remember 100 million lives.
That�s a conservative, if mind-boggling, estimate. If all of the victims of Communism could be resurrected, they would form the twelfth largest nation on Earth.
Perhaps it�s the sheer scale of the horror that daunts us. We can�and we should�lament the individual tragedy. The story of a Pat Tillman or a Daniel Pearl tugs at the heartstrings, for we can take the time to know the life that was and the promise that was left unfulfilled.
But 100 million stories? Attempting to grasp the scale of this tragedy is like trying to comprehend the vastness of space. The system shuts down. Nobody has the ability to digest 100 million stories; 100 million dreams; 100 million families, friends and acquaintances; 100 million lives snuffed out for the crimes of thinking the wrong things, being part of the wrong family, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The folks behind the Memorial originally envisioned a museum, on the scale of the Holocaust Museum, where the horrors of Communism could be documented and displayed. Alas, they could not find donors to fund that ambitious a memorial.
It was not, one suspects, a sexy enough project to attract well-heeled donors. There�s an attitude, among many Americans, that our 70-year battle with Communism was much ado about nothing. Hell, the commies collapsed of their own rotten weight, didn�t they?
There are people who still chuckle about Reagan calling the USSR an �evil empire.� Apparently, those people believe that was the ultimate in Reaganesque hyperbole, although it�s hard to understand why. Combine all of the lives lost in the Holocaust, the Crusades, the bubonic plaque and all of the American lives lost in war - ever - and you�re still not halfway to the grim toll that Communism can claim. If that�s not evil, what is?
The Memorial foundation ultimately settled for something smaller than a museum. They commissioned a bronze statue modeled after the �Goddess of Democracy� erected by Chinese students at Tiananmen Square. The statue stands along Massachusetts Avenue, in sight of the Capital, a location that thousands of D.C. commuters pass every day.
The cost of this modest memorial was $1 million, still a challenging figure- especially since no public funds would be used to build it. There were, fortunately, enough people with long enough memories to meet that goal.
The sculptor, Thomas Marsh, donated his efforts. Companies like Lockheed-Martin and Pfizer chipped in. The Vietnamese American community held a fundraiser that raised over $100,000 for the project.
The last should not surprise anyone. Hucksters like Michael Moore can waddle off to Cuba for photo ops to extol the �virtues� of Communism, but the people who lived it know better.
It�s much the same in my ancestral homeland of Poland. Prior to �the change� (the fall of Communism) visiting my cousins in Poland was a heart-breaking, soul-sapping experience.
One of my cousins lived on the fifth floor of an apartment in Krakow. The elevator and the water hadn�t worked for years. Every morning she would climb five stories of stairs with five gallons of water, taken from a local well, to get her family through the day. When some new �luxury� appeared at a shop�like shoes or toilet paper�she would spend all day in lines that snaked for blocks in hopes of getting a portion of the precious commodity.
Yet, that wasn�t the worst of it. For nobody dared speak out against the system that imposed such hardships on their lives. My cousins�everyone� lived in a constant state of fear. They would not discuss their plight, for fear that someone was listening or that someone�even a family member� would turn them in to the secret police. It was a dreadful, dark life. It was mere existence, devoid of soul.
And it�s no wonder that Poland and the other nations of Eastern Europe are among our closest allies today. Those peoples remember all too well what Communism cost them and what we did in the name of Freedom.
Perhaps the Victims of Communism Memorial will help a few more of us remember that. If you would like to help preserve the memory of those 100 million souls, please visit www.victimsofcommunisim.org and join me in supporting their legacy.
�All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.� Edmund Burke.
