Survivors of communist regimes described imprisonment, religious persecution, economic devastation, political indoctrination, and the loss of basic freedoms during a House Republican roundtable held July 21, while warning Americans against repeating the policies and ideas they said harmed their home countries.
The roundtable, titled “A Warning to America: Stories from Survivors of Communism,” featured witnesses who fled or endured communist systems in China, Cuba, Venezuela, and the Soviet Union. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-MI) exclusively told Breitbart News, “Survivors of communism are warning America because they have seen this story before,” McClain said. “Different countries. Different decades. Same result: poverty, persecution, and the loss of freedom. We would be fools not to listen.”
Among the speakers was José Daniel Ferrer, an internationally recognized human rights defender and political prisoner from communist Cuba, who criticized Democratic members of Congress who travel to Havana and blame conditions in Cuba on the United States.
“When we see Democrat congressmen who go to Havana and say there and then repeat here that what happens in Cuba is the fault of the U.S. administration, we remind them that those communist leaders that they speak with are all very well fed,” Ferrer said. “They have medicine and great clinics. They have the best cars and the best mansions. While the people don’t have health care. They don’t have hospitals that deserve that name. They don’t have transportation. Many of them don’t even have a home to live in.”
“When we hear those Democrat politicians who praise that communist regime, we tell them: Take advantage of your friendship with the Cuban government and go with the press into the presence and show the world the reality of what’s happening there,” Ferrer continued.
“Going to Cuba to speak with the Communist Party leaders, it’s the same as going to Nazi Germany, to North Korea, and the Soviet Union to have dinner and party with the people who oppress their people,” he said.
Ferrer then described the more than 12 years he spent in the Cuban regime’s prisons. “I know what is physical and psychological torture. Extreme hunger,” he said. “I saw men being killed with metal bars. I saw inmates die of tuberculosis and malnutrition combined.”
“Nobody told me that. I lived it and I suffered it in my own skin,” Ferrer continued. “And I know that the 800 political prisoners continue to live it in the prisons of the Cuban regime.”
“So if this nation wants to go back to the Stone Age, keep looking for people like Mamdani,” he concluded.
Daniel Di Martino, an economist, Manhattan Institute fellow, and survivor of communist Venezuela, said, “The only good thing about having lived under socialism is that you learn how bad it is, and so you don’t want to make those same mistakes.”
After coming to the United States a decade ago, Di Martino said he encountered people who argued that what happened in Venezuela “was not due to socialism” but was instead “just another corrupt government.”
“There are many corrupt countries,” Di Martino continued. “Not many countries have 8 million people flee from their country, a third of the population. Not many countries starve to death, even corrupt countries, because you have to take people’s freedom for that to happen.”
He then pointed to other countries, asking, “Do you see people starving in the streets of Dubai, even during the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz? No. Do you see refugees flowing out of Saudi Arabia when oil prices go down? Do you even see countries that are sanctioned starve to death? No.”
“So why is Venezuela? Why is Cuba? Why are all these socialist countries different?” Di Martino asked. “Because the common denominator is that they destroy free enterprise. You cannot start a business. You cannot feed your family, therefore you die and you flee. It’s that simple.”
Mike Gonzalez, a survivor of communist Cuba and a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, referred to Zohran Mamdani, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, saying they “didn’t come out of nowhere.”
“Somebody told them that our society is rotten. Somebody told them that we live in a country that is structurally oppressive. Somebody told them we live in a country that’s systemically racist,” Gonzalez said. “And what do you do when you believe that things are structurally oppressive or systemically racist? You have no other choice but to change the structures of the system, and this is what this kind of rhetoric is intended to do.”
“Our schools created Mamdani,” Gonzalez continued. “Well, Mamdani says on July the Fourth, ‘They say America is exceptional because we’re powerful and rich.’ Nobody says that.”
“I work for the Heritage Foundation. Before that, I spent 11 years at the Wall Street Journal,” he said. “Nobody seriously thinks that of American exceptionalism. We think we’re wealthy and powerful because we’re exceptional, and because we base everything on natural right.”
Gonzalez then turned to the Smithsonian Institution, noting that he had testified about it earlier that day and was scheduled to return the following day.
“The Smithsonian should have told Mamdani this. The schools should have told Mamdani this. Nobody did,” Gonzalez said. “Fix the Smithsonian. Fix the Smithsonian. Work with the Board of Regents, and for heaven’s sakes, do not build the Latino Museum. It is going to be an incubator of hatred and grievances against the United States.”
“I met Jorge Zamanillo, nice guy, but there’s nothing he can do,” Gonzalez continued. “The exhibit that they stopped was being curated by communists, by actual communists, who wanted to say that capitalism had been bad for Hispanics.”
Pastor Ezra Jin, founder of Zion Church, told lawmakers that he had been preaching in China for 30 years and described the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of religion.
“The Chinese Constitution guarantees the right for religious freedom in China as well,” Jin said. “But in China, the party is actually on top of the constitution.”
“The Chinese Communist Party sees religion as a type of superstition and is very against religion and is violently atheist,” he continued. “So in the last 70 years, religion, such as Christianity, but others as well, have been looked down upon and sometimes also persecuted.”
Jin said several Zion Church leaders were arrested across ten cities in October 2025 and detained in southern China.
“We tried to get lawyers, and that was also very difficult,” he said. “At the time when they arrested us, it was on the charge of illegal use of information. By the time they sent us to the prosecutors and to the court, the charges changed to fraud and illegal business.”
“The Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party, sees Christianity and the activities as illegal business and just like a defrauding organization,” Jin said.
“I have eight colleagues and pastors from Zion Church that are still inside prison today,” he continued.
Jin also pointed to Sarah Su, whom he identified as the wife of imprisoned Pastor Franklin Wang Lin.
“He is a phenomenal scholar and graduated from Wheaton College with a PhD in Old Testament theology,” Jin said.
“Since June of 2025, her family has experienced so much pressure from the Chinese Communist Party, and she was unable to even rent any houses inside China,” he continued. “She was forced to go from city to city trying to find housing, and her kids were also unable to go to school.”
“China has many millions of Christians,” Jin said. “There are also hundreds of pastors also inside prison today.”
“We really hope that members here can continue to press for the Christians as well as other prisoners of conscience inside China, to continue to voice for them and to be the voice for the voiceless,” he concluded.
Karina Lipsman, a survivor of the communist Soviet Union and director of external affairs for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, recalled political indoctrination beginning in her first-grade classroom.
“We had a math problem, and the problem was: You have five loaves of bread, and you have two greedy Americans who took one loaf each. How many are you left with?” Lipsman said. “And so the obvious question is none, because greedy Americans take all the bread.”
“So by the time you graduated high school, you were already indoctrinated. You were already a communist,” she continued. “So by the time you got to college, you just started the revolution.”
“If we don’t have anywhere to go, we’re done,” Lipsman said. “America is the greatest country in the world. People don’t flee from America; they flee to America.”
Watch the full roundtable discussion here.