The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation will open its museum and memorial in Washington, D.C. in the near future. Ed Feulner and Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, Chairman and President – CEO of the Foundation, visited Budapest to prepare the event and discuss the future plans of the institution.
Ed Feulner is a long-time friend of the Otto von Habsburg Foundation, and this was the second time he has been a guest in our collection. Feulner is a former adviser to Ronald Reagan and the Founder and former President of The Heritage Foundation. He had close ties to our namesake, so it was only natural that the possibility of a collaboration between the soon-to-open museum in the US capital and our Foundation in the realisation of a temporary exhibition came up in the conversation.
The American guests reported on the situation in the Republican Party, in whose development the perception of the foreign policy situation plays an important role. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine brings back memories of the Cold War – Feulner, as a key witness to this period, recalled some of the elements of the Reagan administration’s policies that led to the fall of Soviet power. Given the geopolitical context, the situation could have been handled more wisely in the past three decades – he said. Feulner, a devout Catholic, has repeatedly described the important role that Otto von Habsburg played in shaping American conservative thinking on the Cold War since the 1960s. On this occasion, he emphasised his optimism even in the most bleak of situations, which had a huge impact on Feulner himself. The “unshakable optimist” Feulner – as Lee Edwards described him – remains hopeful of an early peace settlement in the current situation.
