A Memorial to the Victims of Communism 共产大虐杀纪念碑

陈凯一语： Kai Chen's Words:

陈凯博客： www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

Since the downfall of the Soviet Union, there has been an increasingly damaging occurrence in the free world - a complacency fueled by a nauseating amnesia toward the anti-humanity crimes and atrocities by the world socialism/communism. Without the contrast of the Soviet Union and with a mutated, increasingly powerful Nazism/communism in China, many start to think some form of socialism/communism is acceptable or experimentable. This is equivalent to accepting experimentation of implanting AIDS virus or cancer cells in one's own body. Such an idiotic act, represented by the election of Obama into the White House, will have grave consequences and cause irreparable damage to the cause of freedom. --- Kai Chen

自苏俄倒台后，一个令人担忧的现象在西方自由世界中逐渐呈现： 道德的混乱与麻痹加上令人恶心的健忘症使人们对世界社会主义、共产主义的反人类血腥罪行与历史麻木不仁、无动于衷。 没有苏俄邪恶的对比，加上日渐强大的中共党奴朝的新纳粹共产的变种，世界上许多的人迷梦般地以为有点儿社会主义、共产主义问题不大，可以被接受。 这如同说在自己的健康躯体上可以试验着去加进艾滋病毒和癌细胞一样。 这种蠢行，如将奥巴马选入白宫，将有极为严重的逆向后果和难以修复的对自由事业的损害。 --- 陈凯

The word “memorial” is somewhat misleading, though, suggesting that communism is a closed historical chapter. The fall of the Berlin Wall notwithstanding, communism in one guise or another still determines the fate of millions of hapless people around the globe. Victims in communist regimes are still starved, imprisoned, tortured and denied the most basic of human rights. --- Barbara Kay

“共产主义受害者纪念碑”是一个误导人的说法： 这种提法似乎在说共产主义的邪恶与罪行已经成为历史；我们不必为它而警觉与小心。 柏林墙虽然崩溃了，这不等于说变种的、掩盖其面目的各类社会主义、共产主义已经不再奴役千千万万的人们了。 正相反，今天在世界上各类的共产邪恶政权仍旧持续地用饥荒、囚禁、虐杀与折磨剥夺着人的自由与尊严。 --- 芭芭拉. 凯伊（作者）

---------------------------------------------------

A Memorial to the Victims of Communism 共产大虐杀纪念碑

http://frontpagemag.com/

Posted by Barbara Kay on Mar 18th, 2010

In 1968, naive anti-establishment American and Canadian students considered themselves courageous for locking supine university presidents in their offices, throwing computers out of windows and even burning out-of-favour academics’ research work. They knew that in the free, indulgent West, their childish parody of a revolution would result in nothing more than a suspension from their studies.

In the same year truly courageous Moscow academic Yuri Glazov signed the famous “letter of the twelve,” protesting illegal arrests and trials of dissidents, knowing full well that this real act of revolution would result in a suspension of his human rights.

Glazov was predictably fired, meaning he was henceforth unemployable and deemed a “parasite” on the state. Warned by a friend, he narrowly avoided imprisonment on a trumped-up narcotics-dealing charge. Finally, through a stroke of luck, Glazov came with his family to the West, and in 1975 took up residence in Halifax as chair of the Russian Studies department at Dalhousie University, a position he held until shortly before his death in 1998.

[Yuri Glazov's family shortly before departure from Russia. From left to right: son Greg, Yuri, daughter Elena, wife Marina and son Jamie.]

An outstanding Canadian, Glazov deserves recognition, and so do many other brave dissidents for whom Canada has been a refuge. Nine million Canadians — that’s almost a third of us according to the 2006 census — came to these shores from communist-ruled countries. Many are now dead or very old. Their descendants deserve to see their sacrifices acknowledged and Canadians exposed to the full panoply of communist atrocities.

Prospects for educating Canadians about the human toll exacted by communism through their stories will brighten when a long-sought Ottawa Memorial to the Victims of Totalitarian Communism is completed, a project singled out for endorsement in the recent Throne Speech.

This memorial isn’t just a good idea, like an also-promised national Holocaust memorial, it is a necessary idea.

The exhaustively researched Holocaust is in no danger of being forgotten. The highest term of opprobrium in Western culture, whether from leftists or rightists (rightly or wrongly) is “Nazi,” not “communist.” That’s not because Nazis and communists have been compared and Nazis found to be worse. It’s because people don’t know how bad communism was and is.

In 2006 the Swedish Ministry of Education initiated programs teaching the crimes of communism because a poll had revealed only 10% of Swedish youth could identify the Gulag. Canadian youth would not fare better. All educated Canadians associate the word “Auschwitz” with “genocide.” The equally horrific “Holodomor” is more likely to draw a blank stare.

Why has communism escaped the moral condemnation Nazism attracts in such exuberant degree? In recent years several scholars have addressed the question and provided a litany of reasons, amongst them:

* Stalin was a war ally and therefore escaped the postwar censure he deserved;

* Only since the fall of the Berlin Wall has the most damaging data emerged; by then witnesses were aging and focused on economic priorities;

* There was no Nuremburg, no Truth and Reconciliation moment for communism as there was for other genocidal regimes;

* Communist propaganda machines are extremely efficient at positive branding (Trudeau bought in; his fawning patronage of Fidel Castro was beyond contemptible).

But all reasons pale beside the glaring failure of left-wing intellectuals to admit — and to teach — that communism isn’t simply an unfortunate contingency of socialist passion but an ideology as immoral and implacably ruthless and dramatically consequential as Nazism.

Actually it is more than intellectuals’ failure, which suggests passivity; it was, and is, active avoidance. Yuri Glazov was proud to become a Canadian citizen, but was shocked and chagrined at the ignorance and even denial of communism’s crimes he found amongst his fellow academics. As his son Jamie Glazov noted in his 2009 book, United in Hate: the Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror, “[W]hile we were cherishing our newfound freedom, we encountered … intellectuals in the universities who hated my parents for the story they had to tell …”

Left-wing intellectuals’ laundering of the truth about communism has translated into a vast lacuna in the teaching of 20th century history in our schools — one we can only hope the new memorial will help to fill.

The word “memorial” is somewhat misleading, though, suggesting that communism is a closed historical chapter. The fall of the Berlin Wall notwithstanding, communism in one guise or another still determines the fate of millions of hapless people around the globe. Victims in communist regimes are still starved, imprisoned, tortured and denied the most basic of human rights.

“Centre”? “Testament”? It is not too late to find a word to remind communism’s ongoing victims that right-thinking Canadians know the truth and will not abandon them.