The city of Bedford in southwest Virginia lost 21 of its boys on the beaches of Normandy 66 years ago, and the town’s expansive memorial to D-Day commemorated this last week by adding to the site–a bust of Josef Stalin?
Believe it or not, the long-dead Communist dictator is part of a new feature in the National D-Day Memorial’s Sculpture Program. According to a statement from the director of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, William McIntosh, the third phase of this program features seven Allied leaders “affecting and affected by D-Day” and includes busts of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Clement Attlee, Chiang Kai-shek, and Charles de Gaulle. A plaque at Stalin’s bust acknowledges the dictator’s penchant for “eliminating” his enemies and dissidents before and after World War II. The foundation’s statement continues to say that the “preservation of the lessons and legacy of the decision to embrace Stalin as an ally becomes a matter of critical importance. They are a large part of the D-Day story.” McIntosh declined to comment further.
The Washington Times has a story documenting the outrage from Bedford locals and organizations alike:
A Facebook page with more than 2,000 members as of Monday afternoon has been set up to protest the statue. In an online poll from the Bedford Bulletin, the town’s local newspaper, 94.8 percent of 429 respondents said a bust of Stalin should not be placed at the National D-Day Memorial as of Monday afternoon.
Lee Edwards, chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, another organization involved in the protests against the statue, said he and others thought the prospect of a bust of Stalin was a joke when they first heard about it.
It was “too misplaced and ill-timed,” he said.
Bedford city manager Charles Kolakowski said he hopes this controversy over the Stalin bust does not take away from the overall message of the memorial and that folks remember the hundreds of thousands of Americans who fought in the battle and the war. “People are just a little bit upset that the whole idea of the memorial is being overshadowed by this,” he told me. Kolakowski also emphasized that the foundation, not the city of Bedford, administers the memorial and made the decision to include the Stalin bust.
