page_title: Victims of Communism Memorial
section_title: Dedication ceremony
hierarchical_section_title: Victims of Communism Memorial / Dedication ceremony
caption_attribution_description: President George W. Bush addresses his remarks Tuesday, June 12, 2007, at the dedication ceremony for the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C. President Bush, in recalling the lessons of the Cold War said, “ that freedom is precious and cannot be taken for granted; that evil is real and must be confronted.”
context_page_description: The Victims of Communism Memorial is a memorial in Washington, D.C. located at the intersection of Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues and G Street, NW, two blocks from Union Station and within view of the U.S. Capitol.
  The memorial is dedicated "to the more than one hundred million victims of communism". The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation says the purpose of the memorial is to ensure "that the history of communist tyranny will be taught to future generations."
  The Victims of Communism Memorial was dedicated by President George W. Bush on June 12, 2007, the 20th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech in front of the Berlin Wall.
  The Memorial features a ten-foot bronze replica from photographs, of the Goddess of Democracy, erected by students during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The monument's design and the statue are works of sculptor Thomas Marsh.
  He led a project in 1994, to re-create the Goddess of Democracy in Chinatown, San Francisco.
  The inscription 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
context_section_description: On June 12, 2007, the memorial was officially dedicated. Among the hundreds of invited guests were people from many countries who suffered hardships under Communist regimes, such as Vietnamese poet Nguyen Chi Thien, Chinese political prisoner Harry Wu, Lithuanian anti-communist journalist Nijolė Sadūnaitė and others. During the opening ceremony, President George W. Bush named some of those who suffered from Communism in anonymity:
  They include innocent Ukrainians starved to death in Stalin's Great Famine; or Russians killed in Stalin's purges; Lithuanians and Latvians and Estonians loaded onto cattle cars and deported to Arctic death camps of Soviet Communism. They include Chinese killed in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; Cambodians slain in Pol Pot's Killing Fields; East Germans shot attempting to scale the Berlin Wall in order to make it to freedom; Poles massacred in the Katyn Forest; and Ethiopians slaughtered in the "Red Terror"; Miskito Indians murdered by Nicaragua's Sandinista dictatorship; and Cuban balseros who drowned escaping tyranny.
  President Bush also said, "We'll never know the names of all who perished, but at this sacred place, communism's unknown victims will be consecrated to history and remembered forever. We dedicate this memorial because we have an obligation to those who died, to acknowledge their lives and honor their memory." Bush equated communism to the threat of terrorism then facing the U.S.: "Like the Communists, the terrorists and radicals who have attacked our nation are followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has expansionist ambitions and pursues totalitarian aims."
  On the first anniversary, there was another ceremony by the International Committee for Crimea.  On June 9, 2011, a second commemoration ceremony was held with representatives of ethnic and religious groups who suffered under communist regimes.
caption: George W. Bush speaking at the memorial's dedication ceremony
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Remarks at Dedication of Victims of Communism Memorial", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS-1D Mark II", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "125", "Image YResolution": "125", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2007:06:12 12:55:45", "Image Artist": "Joyce N Boghosian", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "324", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1150", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8618", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "9", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "500", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:06:12 10:44:58", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:06:12 10:44:58", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "9", "EXIF ApertureValue": "51/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "43", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "875", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "679", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1024", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "220000/71", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "585500/189", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}