D-Day Memorial Board to Relocate Stalin Sculpture

Tina Korbe / September 29, 2010

The National D-Day Memorial Foundation Board plans to relocate a controversial bust of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin — but not because the statue has drawn wide criticism, Foundation president Robin Reed said yesterday. The bust was removed from the memorial last night and will be reinstalled at a later date.

“I didn’t remove the bust in light of the opposition,” Reed said. “If anything, the opposition has served as a catalyst for me to kind of look at the reinterpretation of [the memorial design] sooner rather than later.”

The bust is part of a wider display of Allied Leaders — including Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill — at the Bedford, Va., memorial. That particular display was designed to educate memorial visitors about the context in which D-Day occurred and it was doing that, Reed said, but he and the other board members still became concerned that the exhibit — at least in its original location — detracted from the overall purpose of the memorial. (more…)