A specter is haunting the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia—
a $50,000 bust of the Soviet dictator and mass murderer Joseph Stalin.

Clearly, the National D-Day Memorial Foundation knows it made a monumental mistake by including Stalin in its Memorial. It tried to justify its action by adding a plaque citing the tyrant’s “tens of millions of victims” and then to minimize it by privately installing the bust five days before the formal dedication of the D-Day Memorial on June 6.

But the Stalin bust remains as does the profound injury to the memory of those who launched a crusade for freedom in Europe in June 1944. The honorable thing for the National D-Day Memorial Foundation to do is to remove the bust without delay.