Distant Horrors
Masha Rumer
An exhibition at New York's Ellis Island aims to educate Americans about the Soviet gulag.
Few would expect to find metal bars and posters denouncing capitalism next to one of the best-known symbols of American democracy. But a traveling exhibition devoted to the Soviet gulag is now nestled in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, inside an old immigration gateway in New York Harbor.
Titled "Gulag: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom," the exhibition offers visitors to Ellis Island a glimpse into the horrors of the gulag system.
"It's very moving," said Timothy McGuire, a U.S. Navy technician clad in a white uniform, during his recent visit to the exhibition.
"[There is] disagreement about our involvement in foreign wars, but you take a look at what the Soviets were capable of back during the reign of Stalin, and you'll see that we don't have it so bad," he added, wincing at a prisoner's drawing of starved, emaciated bodies.
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