From the speech of Dr. Lee Edwards, Chairman of the “Memorial of the Victims of Communism” Foundation, September 9th 2007 in front of the Memorial of the Victims of Communism:

…[Thank you for coming here today]

…..and I am proud to say that President George Bush was here.

…And in keeping with the bipartisan nature of our Foundation we also heard remarks from Tom Lantos, who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a prominent democrat, and than also from Dana Rohrabacher,[ sponsor of the legislation authorizing the Memorial],from California, a prominent Republican, and also many others. The Papal Nuncio was here and delivered the invocation. We have the ambassadors from some 15 nations, who came here, including the ambassador from Bulgaria.

Why were they here?

They were here along with some one thousand other people because they wanted to memorialize and remember the one hundred million victims of communism, actually more than 100 million victims of communism We don’t really know how many they were and that is one of the things we hope to finally pin down and [ work up] in the Foundation].

And that is why, you cannot read too well from the shadows [of the tree], but on the front of the Memorial are the words:

To the more than 100 million victims of communism and to those who love liberty.

On the back of the memorial are the words:

To the freedom and independence of all captive nations and peoples.

And that is to remind us, there are still people under communism: in China , in Cuba, in North Korea, in Laos and in Vietnam.

But our work has really only begun. This beautiful memorial , two block from Union Station and within sight of the US Capitol with the Statue of Freedom, is only the beginning. Already many delegations like yours has come here, and we are so proud of that and so honored by that. The President of Estonia was here and laid a wreath. The President of Poland [was in town but had a conflict] sent a delegation to present a wreath. The foreign ministers of Latvia, Lithuania and Hungary have also laid wreaths here, and so within next week or so, the foreign minister of Slovakia. As well as many delegations like yours, citizens, Chinese Vietnamese and Cubans, and on and on. So we hope that for years to come, for decades to come, that more and more will come here and address themselves to the memorial.

Let me just say one final time And that is...that building on this success, and it was a great success, all over the world people were commenting about this. As matter of fact we were criticized by both the Chinese communists and also by the Russian communists, who said “you shouldn’t do this”. And so we felt that, well, if both the Chinese communists and Russian communists say “you are doing the wrong thing”, we must be doing the right thing.[Applauds].

And now the next thing we should be doing is to create, what we called the global virtual museum on communism, on the Internet – and we are in the process of doing this and hope to launch that next year. And via Network to connect all the museums and institutions concerned with the victims of communism, and also there will be education tools to help young people, particularly young people, to teach them what communism was and still is.

Because we are committing ourselves to educating this and future generations about the history, philosophy and the legacy of communism. We feel that once that is done, this kind of tyranny will never again come and we can all hopefully l live in freedom, liberty and peace.

Thank you very much for coming, we welcome you and look forward to work with you in the years to come.

Transcription by Constantin C. Chipev, Ph.D.

See: http://www.pro-anti.net/index.php?issue=807
http://www.pro-anti.net/show.php?issue=807&article=1
(for details (in Bulgarian) on the opening ceremony June 12 2007 written by Nasya Kralevska or ask Google on the Internet).