Wall Street Opinion Journal Brian M. Carney Tuesday, June 27, 2006
A dissonant note of moral equivalence at an exhibit on communist horrors.
ELLIS ISLAND, N.Y.–Tucked out of the way on the top floor of the main building here is a curious little traveling exhibit about the Soviet Gulag. On the day that I visited, no signs in the lobby of the Ellis Island Museum announced the presence of the exhibit; one happened upon it through determination or by chance, stepping with little warning from display cases devoted to the hopes of immigrants seeking freedom or opportunity in America into the hopeless deprivation and cruelty of Siberian death camps.
The Gulag exhibition is on display at the museum through July 4, after which it will travel around the country over the next two years–to Boston; Independence, Calif.; Atlanta; and Washington. The show’s title, “GULAG: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom,” offers some hint as to why the exhibit is being housed here during its New York stop; Ellis Island is, in its own way, about the struggle for freedom. And it sits, of course, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.
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