Honoring the Victims of Communism on V-E Day
As we celebrate V-E Day, marking the Third Reich’s surrender to Allied forces, we must remember that the end of Hitler’s Germany didn’t bring the end of Eastern Europe's sorrows. The East faced another half-century of communist slavery under the Soviet Union. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin started the war as Adolf Hitler’s willing partner in war crime. During and after the war, the Soviets looted priceless works of art from Poland, squeezed hundreds of millions of dollars from several Eastern European countries, and started massive campaigns of ethnic cleansing in conquered territories. To further cement Soviet control over what would become known as the Iron Curtain, Stalin imposed on Eastern Europe communist dictators whose brutality makes Attila the Hun look like Mother Theresa.