A new Washington, D.C.-based museum honoring the 100 million plus victims of global communism opens later this month.

Originally slated to open in 2021, the Victims of Communism Museum will welcome visitors starting June 13th, 2022. It’s managed by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation—an organization established in 1993 by a “unanimous Act of Congress signed as Public Law 103-199 by President William J. Clinton on December 17, 1993.”

This museum will educate visitors about the atrocities committed under communist regimes and discuss its global reach under totalitarian governments today. //

Our final stop on the media tour was meeting participants of Victims of Communism’s Witness Project, the organization’s award-winning video series, in the adjacent conference room.

There I met Merita McCormack, originally from communist Albania, who is grateful to VOC for keeping her and her family’s stories alive.

“There's many folds of importance here,” she told me. “First of all, you tell the story— tell a true story— which is not been even told in our own countries. Second, it's healing. It's very therapeutic for those who have gone into seeing that somebody cares and tells the stories. And the third is, I think most important, and this is kind of got me into getting involved with this, is that our children that are Americans know what happens. And it [communism] doesn't happen here.”

“In order for the future to be safe of certain dangers, we have to tell the stories of what happened. We don't want that repeated,” she added.