So they just built all those museums dedicated to the hardship and terror of those years as a little joke to mess with westerners like me as I traveled through their countries?

Interesting side fact, in places that were occupied by both sides in WW2, some museums could do double duty. The places the Gestapo used to imprison, torture, and murder were often the same places the communists used for the same purposes.

[–] PASAQUALIA@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes. Turns out smearing communism is very lucrative for powerful people. And no, the only communists that set foot in concentration camps were prisoners there alongside Jews, homosexuals, Romani, and other minorities. EDIT: forgot to mention the communists who liberated the camps too

[–] Jmdatcs@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Your do a great disservice to the tens-of-thousands of victims of the communist states. I spent a lot of time in these places, looking at mugshots and intake forms and reading about what happened to them.

What do you think when you hear about a fascist antisemite standing in front of a pile of children's shoes in a Holocaust museum saying "it didn't happen"? Because that's what I think about you right now.

And I never said concentration camps (edit: although these museums do tell the stories of the tens-of-thousands "deported" to camps in Siberia and other places), I was taking about buildings used for the imprisonment, torture, and murder of mostly political prisoners, but also others that upset the Nazis/communists in some way. Here is one example of many. https://www.terrorhaza.hu/en

[–] PASAQUALIA@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're the one conflating Nazis with the very people who did the world the service of defeating them so I think that very thing about YOU right now. Did certain communist organizations overstep their bounds and even commit crimes against humanity? Yes, tragically. And that's disgusting. Did that happen on anywhere near the scale that Fascists did, or that the current capitalist class IS CURRENTLY DOING?? Not even close, not even in the same galaxy. What you're condemning is the exception for communism and the rule for capitalism, and I condemn it as well.

[–] Jmdatcs@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I am not conflating Nazis and communists. I am comparing you to a Holocaust denier because of your conspiracy theories about the existence of these places established to educate people about the well documented atrocities of the communist states. I didn't say they were as bad as the Nazis overall, I pointed out they happily used the cramped cells, torture implements, and kill rooms left behind.

It is very much not the exception in communism. I have been to almost every former Warsaw pact country and a few countries that were part of the USSR and these museums are universal.

[–] diskmaster23@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago

And what about the victims of capitalism? There are endless victims.