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Ottoman Turkey 1915-1917 Armenians 1-1.5 million 1866, 1911 Art. 166, Penal Code
Soviet Union* 1929-1953 Anti-Communists 20 million 1929 Art. 182, Penal Code
Anti-Stalinists
Nazi Germany** 1933-1945 Jews, Gypsies, 13 million 1928 Law on Firearms &
& occupied Europe Anti-Nazies Ammunition, April 12
1938 Weapons Law, March 18
China* 1949-1952 Anti-Communists 20 million 1935 Arts. 186-7, Penal Code
1957-1960 Rural population Art 9, Security Law, Oct. 22
1966-1976 Pro-reform group
Guatemala 1960-1981 Maya Indians 100,000 1871 Decree 36, Nov. 25
1964 Decree 283, Oct. 27
Uganda 1971-1979 Christians, 300,000 1955 Firearms Ordinance
Political rivals 1970 Firearms Act
Cambodia 1975-1979 Educated persons 1 million 1956 Arts. 322-8, Penal Code
TOTAL VICTIMS: 55.9 MILLION |
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*The laws mentioned are part of an older and/or wider body of law on and regulation of private firearms ownership.
** For a complete translation of these laws, including regulations specifically banning Jews from owning any weapons and a side-by-side comparison of the Nazi Weapons Law with the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968, see "Gun Control": Gateway to Tyranny, J.E. Simkin & A. Zelman, 1992; available from JPFO.
All the above information provided by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc.
2872 S. Wentworth Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53207 |
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In America we have memorials commemorating those who died in the Civil War, both World Wars, the Vietnam and Korean Wars, the Holocaust, and the civil rights movement. But we have no memorial to the 100 million casualties of the most brutal genocide ever visited upon the human race: communism.
Fortunately, this glaring over-sight is about to be rectified. In 1993 more than 75 years after the Bolsheviks Best embarked on their glorious revolution Congress approved and President Clinton signed legislation authorizing a memorial to the victims of communism.
Its long overdue. In all of world history, no political ideology has sent more people to the slaughterhouse than Karl Marxs utopian pipe dream. Even Hitler, certainly one of historys most demented butchers, killed only one-tenth the number of people that Marxs disciples killed. Yet, most Americans have no idea just how bloody communisms legacy is.
How many Americans, for example, know that between 1917 and 1987 the Communist dictators in the former Soviet Union murdered 62 million people? How many know that China, has killed more than 38 million people? These two Communist regimes alone have stamped out 100 million human lives 25 million more than died in the Black Plague, formerly the worlds deadliest disaster.
And this doesnt even include the body count from the smaller Communist regimes: Cambodia, 2 million dead at the hands of Pol Pots Khmer Rouge; Vietnam, 850,000 sacrificed to the greater glory of Ho Chi Minh; Ethiopia, tens of thousands slaughtered during Mengistu Haile Mariam's Red Terror; and Cuba, whose death toll, while. certainly in the tens of thousands, only Fidel Castro knows for sure.
As much as some would like to downplay the horrors of communism (frequently because they viewed the United States as a threat to mankind equal to the regimes committing these horrors), communisms signature has never changed: death.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, the philosopher George Santayana said. Thats why a memorial to the victims of communism in the nations capital is necessary and proper. Future generations must know that when you impose a ruthless ideology by force no matter how well-intentioned the result is human carnage. So it is with a deep sense of honor that Ive accepted an invitation to serve on the memorials advisory board.
Fittingly, the memorial also will celebrate those heroes who made possible the Wests victory over tyranny. As observed by my colleague and longtime Cold Warrior Hugh Newton to whom credit goes for the idea of an anti-communist Hall of Heroes without the likes of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, among others, wed still be worried about trading missiles with Russia, rather than trading goods.
As befits a memorial to the victims of government-sponsored violence, the project will be funded entirely with private money. The goal is to raise $100 million one dollar for each of the 100 million victims of Marx and Mao.
In addition to a roll call of every victim of communism that can be identified and the Hall of Heroes, the memorial also will feature a Hall of Infamy artifacts of communisms inhumanity to man, including a section of the Berlin Wall, a re-creation of a barracks from the Soviet Gulag, a room at the Hanoi Hilton and a cell at Mr. Castros infamous Isle of Pines.
If you would like to join many of us and contribute to the creation of this memorial, I encourage you to do so. Just write to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 1997; Washington, D.C. 20013-1997. Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao will never be forgotten, and neither should their victims. |
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