Sec. 1271. Recognition of victims of Soviet Communist and Nazi regimes
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Congress makes the following findings: On August 13, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued a joint declaration of certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they based their hopes for a better future for the world and the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them and that the people of countries may live in freedom.
The United States Government has actively advocated for and continues to support the principles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations General Assembly resolution 260
(III)of December 9, 1948. Captive Nations Week, signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959, raised public awareness of the oppression of nations under the control of Communist and other nondemocratic governments. The European Parliament resolution on European conscience and totalitarianism of April 2, 2009, and the Black Ribbon Day resolution adopted by the Parliament of Canada on November 30, 2009, establish a day of remembrance for victims of Communist and Nazi regimes to remember and commemorate their victims. On the 70th anniversary of the formal adoption by the Nazi leadership of the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem , members of the European Parliament and the national parliaments of the European Union rejected attempts to obfuscate the Holocaust by persons who sought to diminish the uniqueness of the Holocaust by deeming the Holocaust to be equal, similar, or equivalent to Communism. Extreme forms of totalitarian rule have led to premeditated and vast crimes committed against millions of human beings and their basic and inalienable rights on a scale unseen before in history. The Nazi regime committed mass genocide during the Holocaust, killing millions of Jews, political opponents, and minority populations. August 23 would be an appropriate date to designate as Black Ribbon Day to remember and never forget the terror millions of citizens in Central and Eastern Europe experienced for more than 40 years by ruthless military, economic, and political repression of the people through arbitrary executions, mass arrests, deportations, the suppression of free speech, confiscation of private property, and the destruction of cultural and moral identity and civil society, all of which deprived the vast majority of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe of their basic human rights and dignity, separating them from the democratic world by means of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. The memories of Europe's tragic past cannot be forgotten in order to honor the victims, condemn the perpetrators, and lay the foundation for reconciliation based on truth and remembrance. Congress supports the designation of Black Ribbon Day to recognize the victims of Soviet Communist and Nazi regimes.