The Museum of the Victims of Communism opened its doors on the 8th of June in Washington. It was founded on the initiative of the Memorial Foundation for the Victims of Communism. The seat of the Museum is located near the place where the Goddess of Freedom Monument was erected in 2007.

One of the tasks of the Museum of Victims of Communism in Washington is to present the history of Poland under communism and its victims as broadly as possible, starting with the fight against Bolshevik Russia in 1920, the activities of the anti-communist underground, and ending with the establishment of the Solidarity Trade Union.

The permanent exhibition of the museum has been divided into three sections, in which visitors can watch several films on such topics as the Battle of Warsaw and the story of the gulags. 

The last section of the museum includes interactive screens with a decision game – the participant takes on the role of one of the three characters living under a communist regime in different countries.

“In Europe today, communism is a marginal phenomenon. However, there are places in the world where this criminal ideology continues to thrive and is taking more victims. I am convinced that the Museum […] will be an important centre for the exchange of ideas, discussions, and education, and will help stop the spread of this criminal ideology around the world,” Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture and National Heritage Prof. Piotr Gliński stated during the inauguration ceremony. 

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“Communism left its mark on the history of Poland in the 20th century, and its effects are still present in the public sphere. […] In 1920, Poland was the first to stop the Bolshevik army’s march westwards, protecting Europe from the red plague. It paid a very high price for it less than 20 years later, when in September 1939, two weeks after the German aggression against Poland […] it was attacked from the east by the Red Army” – Piot Gliński explained.

Without exceptions,  everywhere the communist ideology has been implemented, it was accompanied by political repression, totalitarianism, restrictions on human rights, poor economic performance, and cultural and artistic censorship, not to mention killings, imprisonments, and deportations. 

The Museum of the Victims of Communism is therefore an excellent initiative that gets things straight. It will – hopefully – allow the younger generations to acquire a better knowledge of a movement that devastated tens of millions of lives across the world and which is too often being whitewashed by university scholars, among others, in the West.  

Image : Twitter @VoCommunism and ipngov.pl_eng

Author: Sébastien Meuwissen