Memory and Gratitude
Those who lived under communism are often deeply grateful to the United States because they remember oppression, fear, and enforced conformity.
On April 23, 2026, I attended the Roll Call ceremony at the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, DC, organized by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
Each year, the ceremony commemorates the millions of men, women, and children who suffered or perished under communist regimes worldwide. The Memorial is modest in scale but immense in meaning. It features a bronze replica of the Goddess of Democracy, modeled after the statue erected by Chinese students during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The inscription below the statue reads:
To the more than one hundred million victims of communism and to those who love liberty. To the freedom and independence of all captive nations and peoples.
The ceremony gathered ambassadors from former communist countries, representatives of civil society, religious leaders, scholars, and survivors of totalitarian regimes.
Wreaths were laid as speakers reflected on the moral obligation to remember the victims and to speak honestly about the systems that oppressed them. Several emphasized that remembrance is neither bitterness nor revenge, but an affirmation of human dignity and moral truth.
The illiberal and inhumane nature of totalitarian socialism is revealed by its relentless historical record. Both national socialism and communism produced systems of mass repression. Both negate the founding principles of the United States—the inherent worth of every human being and the existence of innate, inalienable rights.
Stalin’s grim remark—that one death is a tragedy while a million is a statistic—captures the moral corruption that enabled such crimes. The deaths of more than 100 million people under communist regimes cannot plausibly be dismissed as accidents or aberrations. The theory itself calls for violence and intolerance. When enforced by state power, it proved as lethal as its execution.
As Alan Kors once wrote:
No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power.
He further remarked that wherever socialism acquired the authority to plan society, abolish private property, suppress markets, and allocate resources, it crushed individual, economic, religious, associational, and political liberty. By contrast, societies rooted in voluntary exchange, personal responsibility, and the rule of law have repeatedly produced both prosperity and abundance of human choice.
Those who lived under communism are often deeply grateful to the United States because they remember oppression, fear, and enforced conformity. Those who escaped such regimes and found refuge in America are grateful not only for freedom, but for the opportunities that freedom creates.
Memory makes gratitude possible. Gratitude sustains a civilization. Without memory, freedom is taken for granted; without gratitude, it cannot endure.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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Comments
Recently The Bride and I visited the National Museum Of The U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio as part of an Air Force reunion. It’s our second visit and there may be more in the future. Nothing like a group of old military guys (and a few gals) swapping tales and reliving memories. But I digress.
The museum is filled with aircraft and memoribilia about our armed forces fighting against tyranny and for our God given right to enjoy life as we desire, not as others dictate. Bocks Car is there, as well as other aircraft that flew in combat. There are two F-111s that many of the reunion participants worked on, as well as an RF-4C that I put hands on hundreds of times while in the Alabama Air National Guard. Seeing artifacts is one thing; seeing artifacts that have personal connections is another. One of the best parts is telling others how they operated since we know from experience.
Everything in the Museum is connected with defending us and our allies from defeat at the hands of enemies that would have bent us to their ways if they had been able from World War I to the present day. With all the news about how communism seems to be making “progress” in America, it’s encouraging to know that recruitment numbers are dramatically up and those recruits will have the tools to continue the job.
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I admit i didn’t know there was a Victims of Communism Foundation but I’m glad there is. We have too many people, and the number
seems to be growing who think communism and/or socialism is the way to prosperity for all.
That group think seems to be taking over the Democrat party. Warren, Sanders and too many others on the left seem to embrace it.
As the saying goes, “Ignorance is Bliss”.
Thanks for getting the word out.
As usual, excellent post.
If I may , https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
Deaths from governments murdering their own citizens is way under estimated.
Have came across more stories how the Communists have murdered than I care to remember, but won’t forget.
communistnazi governments define murder differently than the sane person does……..lugi and his fans prove that
Presently, the Dems are supporting the other side of the murderous Islamo- Marxist coin .. Islam and the “finest” example… Iran. Torture and death now for possessing a StarLink. All that is going on in Iran is a visual of the dream of the Democrat Party of the future… partially in action now. As Churchill wrote…. the virtue of socialism (Communism….same end point) is shared misery. (except if a high party member).
complete agreement
As Alan Kors once wrote:
No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power.
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my father fought in the skies of europe during the war and did not return stateside until late ’45–he rarely spoke of what he did in the war and what he had seen while there–a quiet man not given to hyperbole he did tell us that what the nazis had done to the people of the nations they overran and to the people of their own country, the carnage the murder was shocking but that what stalin et al had done and were still doing was likely even worse
thank you for this article–thoughtful and sobering
“By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.”
The Road To Serfdom — F.A Hayek