by Jay Litvin

On April 26, 1986, life changed forever for the men, women, and children living in the southwest Soviet Union. At 1:23 a.m., the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew up, spewing radioactive materials into the atmosphere. The intensity of the radiation at ground zero was 100 times the radiation generated by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

A girl cries when she hears she cannot board the flight to Israel.

Radioactive fallout spread across much of the globe, but the area of greatest contamination lay in Chernobyl and its surrounding areas — northern Ukraine, southern Belarus, and western Russia. Today Chernobyl’s thirty-kilometer circumference is a “dead zone.” It is one of several closed areas in Ukraine and Belarus that are deemed too dangerous to inhabit (although some people continue to live there).

The tragedy continues. Thousands have died from radiation-related illness. Many more are sick, and the heartbreaking toll grows every year.

The one hopeful note is sounded by private organizations that work tirelessly to provide humanitarian aid. The Jewish organization involved is Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl, which has to date airlifted over 1,800 Jewish children to Israel. There they receive medical treatment, eat non-contaminated food, obtain a Jewish education, and breathe the clean air that gives them a chance at a healthy life.

Jay Litvin, a frequent contributor to The Jewish Homemaker, is the Medical Liaison for Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl. He has been to Ukraine and Belarus frequently, as part of the CCOC team that assists people — Jew and non-Jew — living in the contaminated areas. In the following reports, Litvin discusses the region’s Jewish history, depicts a harried evening before an airlift to Israel, and visits a Ukrainian hospital. In this issue’s Reflections column he enters a dead zone.

The Ukrainian Government recently published a map depicting the spreading stain of radioactivity that emanates from the destroyed nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. This stain travels from Chernobyl north to Belarus, east to western Russia, and south to Kiev and beyond.

Mordechai Weitzman, an avocational historian, has a similar map on his wall in Jerusalem. It delineates the Pale of Settlement, the area of the Russian Empire where millions of Jews were forcibly concentrated from 1791 until the 1917 revolution.

Pale of Settlement

If you overlay the two maps, they match almost exactly. The shared boundary of these maps marks a piece of earth that has been soaked in Jewish blood for the past two centuries. When one understands the Jewish history of this region, one sees the Chernobyl explosion not only as a nuclear disaster, but as a Jewish disaster as well.

The city of Chernobyl is located in the heart of the Pale of Settlement. At its zenith, the Pale was home to the largest Jewish population in the world. It was not their home by choice; Jews had been concentrated there by anti-Semitic rulers, consigned to the depths of poverty and deprivation.

This policy of segregation was officially formulated by Czar Alexander I in 1804, following the absorption by the Russian Empire of eastern Poland and its several hundred thousand unwanted Jews. These Jews were joined in the Pale by others who were moved from across Russia. The attitude toward Jews was summed up by a government advisor who stated that the ultimate goal was to exterminate one-third of the Jewish population, to convert the second third to Christianity, and to exile the final third. Confined to the Pale, the Jews were ripe targets for the merciless pogroms that occurred during the next 150 years.

From the Pale’s inception, its Jewish population was terrorized by anti-Semitic elements in Belarus and Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Russian Empire imposed legislative hardships on the Jews: restricting them from certain occupations, prohibiting them from owning land or selling liquor, even dictating their modes of transportation and dress.

The cruelest decree came in 1827, when Czar Nicholas I ordered each Jewish community to deliver a quota of conscripts to serve in the Russian army for twenty-five years or longer. Boys as young as twelve were drafted. Jewish children were kidnapped from their homes and forcibly taken from their mother’s arms. Strenuous efforts were made to convert the Jewish “soldiers” to Christianity, and many thousands were lost to their people, existing only in the memories of their bereaved families.

Jay Litvin in Chernobyl; in the background is the fourth nuclear reactor.

Jews constituted up to ten percent of the Pale’s population. They lived in an agricultural society, but unable to own land, they survived by working as peddlers, tailors, shoemakers — whatever it took to earn enough to feed their families. The supply of these artisans overwhelmed the demand for their services, and many Jews lived in abject poverty. One’s next meal was by no means a certainty.

Despite all the hostility and neglect, the Jewish community of the Pale increased in size. And in conditions of deprivation, Jewish mothers and fathers would not compromise Torah education. In some yeshivos, there was only one set of Talmud for the entire student body; yet Torah scholarship reached an apex in the great yeshivos that dotted the Pale, including Volozhin, Radin, Mir, and Ger. The chassidic dynasties of Lubavitch, Stolin, Ger, and so many others flourished in the Pale.

Although the average Jew living in the Pale was impoverished, most Jewish children could read and write; at the same time, eighty percent of the general population was illiterate.

Numerous others trends emerged, some of which continue to impact Jewish life almost a century after the dissolution of the Pale. Zionism, socialism, and secular Yiddish culture were among these trends.

With no available outside avenues of help, the Jews created a system of social services that augured the modern welfare state. In the mid-1800’s, each local Jewish administration oversaw the welfare of its community, attending to alms for the poor, dowries for indigent brides, the upkeep of orphanages and infirmaries, and the chevra kadisha (burial society).

By taking care of their own, the Jews survived.

In the early 1900’s, the pre-revolution social and economic chaos that seized Russia claimed thousands of Jewish lives. Pogroms erupted throughout the Pale following each new political upheaval. In 1903, the Jewish residents of Kishinev were attacked and 1,500 shops and houses were destroyed or looted. Forty-five people were murdered while several hundred were injured.

With the establishment of the Leninist regime in 1917, Jewish communal, religious, and cultural life was brought to an official and brutal end. The Pale of Settlement ceased to exist as a specific entity. Many Jews had put their hopes in Communism; now those hopes were crushed. Purges and mass imprisonment followed the creation of the Soviet Union, with its commitment to wipe out religion.

The Jews of the Soviet Union suffered doubly; not only were they hated, but the very practice of Judaism was now illegal. Nevertheless, Jewish organizations, operating underground at great risk, continued to care for the welfare of the community, preserving life and caring for the poor and the sick.

In 1941, the Nazis invaded Russia, and the Jews of the Pale area provided an expendable human buffer against the aggressors. The Holocaust arrived in its full fury, with the complicity of many local citizens.

In 1986, when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded, more than 500,000 Jews still lived in the Pale area. These lands received the full force of the destroyed reactor’s radioactive fallout. Thus the Russian policy of confining large numbers of Jews to the Pale has had a vile consequence, with a disproportionate number of Jews becoming Chernobyl victims.

Tens of thousands of Jewish children have been exposed to 126 deadly radioisotopes from the release of 150 tons of radioactive material. The cancer rate among Chernobyl’s children is 200 times above normal, and scientists predict this rate will increase dramatically for the next thirty to fifty years.

Thirteen years after Chernobyl, the toll to human life and to the environment continues to rise. Tragically, this most modern disaster promises to cast a long shadow of death and disease well into the twenty-first century.

In Kiev three hours after Shabbat, Rabbi Yosef Aronov, Chairman of Tzeirei Chabad in Israel, Yossie Raichik, director of the Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl project, and I sat in a hotel, prepared for the frenzied night to come. We were here to conduct the last in a series of interviews of Ukrainian Jewish families whose children would be leaving for Israel the next morning on a CCOC flight.

In a bittersweet moment, a mother takes leave of her son.

Twenty-seven boys and girls were scheduled to fly, on their way to a better life in Kfar Chabad. They and their families came with their visas, passports, and other paperwork prepared. Unexpectedly five additional children appeared. They came with their parents, the latter hoping to somehow persuade us to take their children along on Sunday’s flight, despite the fact that they lacked departure papers.

The interviews began. Life for children in many parts of Ukraine, with its relentless disease and medical neglect, is almost beyond comprehension. These families came from Chernigov, sixty miles from Chernobyl, two-and-a-half hours from Kiev by bus. In Chernigov, thyroid disease is so prevalent that parents don’t even bother to mention it when describing their child’s medical condition. I had to ask.

“Thyroid disease?” said one woman. “Of course Oleandra has problems with her thyroid. All the children do.” Responded another woman to a question about her daughter’s health: “Health? There is no such thing as health in Chernigov.”

Thsi mother pleaded her children's case for hours, but to no avail; without proper papers, they could not board.

Borys entered the room with his parents. I observed that he was a very sick seven- or eight-year-old. His skin was translucent. He was not pale, but white, with deep dark circles around his eyes. His cheeks were sunken, like those of an old man. I was shocked to learn that he was actually eleven years old; he was no larger than the seven-year-old who had sat in the same chair minutes earlier! Then I realized that he had been five months old at the time of the disaster, the age of highest risk for these children.

Asked about Borys’s health, his mother held up her hands in a gesture of helplessness and said, “He has so many problems that I don’t know where to begin.” She began to list them: thyroid, enlarged liver, stomach pains, difficulty breathing, blood. Finally she gave up and said, “They’re all listed in his medical chart. Look there. I can’t remember them all.”

Yossie Raichik asked another mother about her daughter’s medical care. “You must be joking,” she said. “I have no money. My daughter cries from her headaches and there is nothing I can do.” What about aspirin? “Aspirin costs one dollar for each pill. I make thirty dollars a month. How can I afford aspirin?”

A grandmother accompanied her two grandchildren because their mother is hospitalized and their father had abandoned them. After they left the room, another woman came in to tell us: “I know that family. The mother is sick all the time and the father is not there. The children are home from school a lot because of headaches and stomach pains. Nobody takes care of them and nobody will take care of them. If you take these two kids, you will be saving two young lives.”

What a difference a flight makes. The mother was overjoyed that her son and daughter were able to leave on CCOC's twenty-eighth airlift.

We finished interviewing the twenty-seven approved children at 2 a.m. Now it was time for the other five, the ones we could not take along. First came Moshke with his daughter. His wife had died four years earlier of cancer. A chemist, she had been drafted by the government to go to Chernobyl right after the explosion, when the radiation was at its most intense. Now his daughter was very ill. “If my daughter stays here, I am afraid she will end up like her mother. I couldn’t bear to lose both of them.”

Why not leave with her? “I will,” he said. “But I want my child out right away. If Israel is good for her, I will follow.” Pulling up roots is hard, and many parents send their kids with us as advance scouts. If Israel works out, the parents will come later.

Rabbi Aronov explained to Moshke that we could not arrange a passport, a visa, and the other necessary documents in time for the present flight. He accepted the inevitable, but begged us to take her on the next flight.

Four of the families accepted the reality that we could not take along their children without advance arrangements. One mother would not take no for an answer.

Compounding the problem, she had built up the hopes of her son and daughter. They had come with suitcases packed, and she had even removed them from school, telling the principal they would not be returning. Perhaps she felt that these extraordinary measures would get her children on the plane, abetted by the force of her will and the endless tears she shed in the interview.

We explained that we could not help, but to no avail. At 3:30 a.m., after all the interviews had been concluded, she again made her case: “How can I take them back home? How can you ask me to do this to my children? You don’t know how badly they need to leave Chernigov. They are sick and no one will help. Please, I beg you, please.”

Finally Rabbi Aronov stated sensitively but firmly that it was impossible for them to board this flight; we would try to arrange for them to come on a subsequent airlift.

Children of Chernobyl arrive at Ben-Gurion Airport.

We started to go out to our car for the return ride to the hotel where we were staying; the family was waiting for us in the lobby. The boy sat in the corner, weeping. His head was in his hands, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably from his sobs. The daughter, gently clutching her mother, also wept. Again the mother pleaded; the daughter joined her. Our translator was not there and I did not understand the words, but their tears and broken voices communicated their desperation very clearly.

Finally we broke loose of the mother and daughter and walked out the door; there was nothing more we could do. The Kiev street was desolate, the ground wet, the air filled with fog. We walked to the car silently, each consumed in his feelings of sadness and helplessness. We were angry, tired, and frustrated. Although we were saving twenty-seven children, at that moment only one family was in our thoughts, a family that we would have to leave behind.

As we exited the parking lot past the front of the hotel, we saw them again. They stood under the lone bulb that battled the night. They did not see us. The boy’s head was buried in his mother’s bosom; she in turn had wrapped her arms around his shoulders. I could not hear them, but there was no mistaking the spasmodic rise and fall of their shoulders as they comforted each other.

Rabbi Aronov, who had been here over two dozen times, in preparing for each flight, knew what would come next. “They’ll be at the airport tomorrow. They won’t give up.”

We arrived at the airport at 6:30 a.m.; the mother and her children were waiting for us. There was nothing new to say, but they kept trying. Did they hope for a miracle? Did they believe that their tears would somehow force the government to ease the obstacles placed in the path of potential émigrés? Surely they knew better, but they kept trying. The alternative — being left behind — was unimaginable.

All the parents who had come to bid farewell were tearful, as were many of the children. Yet these were the lucky ones, and they knew it. As we processed the tickets and the luggage, parents waved and called out encouragement to their little ones: “Remember to write! We’ll call you! It won’t be long until we see you!”

I tried to comfort a little girl with long braids. Her face was covered with tears as she waved non-stop to her mother. “Here’s one girl who won’t make it by herself,” I worried. In my concern for her I forgot about the family that was not joining us. When I remembered, I could no longer locate them. Had they given up and gone home, or were they somewhere in the crowd, still hoping?

I held the hand of the little braided girl as we walked up the stairs to the departure gate. As soon as we reached the landing, she let go and ran ahead to join her friends at the window overlooking the runway. It was to be the first plane trip for all of them. Her tears and sadness were gone, replaced by excitement. Indeed, all the children had magically transformed in a matter of minutes. Gone were the tears and waves of little kids. They reminded me more of brave soldiers about to embark on a serious mission.

The sun was shining on Ben-Gurion Airport when we arrived. I was first through passport control, and as each child followed, I gathered them in a group. We chatted and laughed. Some spoke a bit of English. They enjoyed when I tickled them or tousled their hair.

The customs officers smiled at the scene. A burly security guard came over to inquire about the children. He returned with two female soldiers, each carrying a bag of candy to give the Children of Chernobyl their first sweet taste of Israel. “Bruchim haba’im leYisrael — Welcome to Israel,” they said.

The guard turned to me. “Kol hakavod, Chabad.” It was a proud and happy moment.

Postscript: Two months later, all five children who were denied boarding came to Israel on the twenty-eighth Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl flight, along with an additional twenty kids. They are doing very well in Kfar Chabad.

It was thirty degrees below zero when I arrived at Ovruch Regional Hospital, in Ukraine near the border with Belarus. The hospital had no heat or hot water. The patients, including the children, were dressed in coats and scarves. Babies, most suffering from bronchitis and pneumonia, lay in bed wearing heavy jackets, sweaters, booties, mittens, and scarves. The nurses worked in overcoats and boots along with the tall chef-like nursing caps typical for the region.

During surgery, four people are needed to hold this operating table steady.

The hospital is located approximately thirty-five miles from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Following the nuclear accident, nineteen villages in the Ovruch rayon (county) were evacuated. Ovruch is the biggest rayon in Ukraine, with a population of 71,500, including 13,123 children. A 1996 medical examination of 20,146 people (13,123 children) revealed a drastic decrease of healthy children, from forty-two percent in 1986 to nine percent at the end of 1996. There were 170 cases of childhood cancer, thirty-five percent in late stage. The infant mortality rate in Ovruch was eighteen percent.

The rate of thyroid cancer and breast cancer had increased by 200% since the explosion. Because of the large amount of radioactive iodine, thyroid disease is of primary concern here, with forty percent of the children affected. Yet at the time of my visit, thyroid screening was unavailable. The hospital had no mammography machine and one ancient x-ray machine.

According to Ovruch Hospital’s Director and Chief Doctor, Vladmir Levkovsky: “The increased morbidity rate in children includes a catastrophic growth in cardiovascular, oncological, and gastrointestinal diseases, including tuberculosis and hemeoblastoses. Due to severe governmental budgetary cuts in allocations to health services and maintenance, the affected population is not receiving proper medical services.” I found the hospital’s medicine cabinet nearly bare, with only a shallow row of medicines on the bottom shelf. The refrigerator used for keeping medicines cold contained only a nurse’s lunch.

Alla watches over Alexander, who is wrapped in his clothing to ward off the cold of the hospital.

I found the hospital supplying no blankets, medicine, or food, with families required to provide and pay for everything. Parents spend nearly an entire month’s salary ($30 to $50) on medical care for their hospitalized children. What parents cannot pay for, their children do not receive.

Alla, 22, sat next to her three-month-old baby, Alexander. Alla told me that she has to supply the hospital with syringes, vitamins, and antibiotics to care for her son. “If I run out of money for the medicine, that’s it. They won’t make me leave the hospital, but they will stop giving him medicine.”

I was taken to the operating room, where I found a surgical table so broken that it wobbled like an old kitchen chair with uneven legs. During surgery, four people were needed to hold the table steady.

Ivan Ochrimchinka, head of the Ovruch rayon, told me that conditions were worsening as the world’s interest in Chernobyl waned. When I told him that I would do what I could to help, he looked at me and smiled. “Everyone who visits here says that,” he said. “But we never receive anything. I don’t mean to insult you. That’s just the way it is.”

On August, 1, 1999, the Ovruch Regional Hospital was sent a new operating table by Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl, along with tenss of thousands of dollars worth of medicines, medical supplies, blankets, and toys (when I visited, the hospital had no toys).

The Zhitomer oblast oncology center received a mammography machine, and will soon receive an upright breast biopsy device, together with staff training, x-ray films, and breast cancer informational brochures. (Ovruch is located within Zhitomer oblast, or state.)

Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl and its partners around the world are proving Ivan Ochrimchinka wrong.

Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl was created in 1990 by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, zt’l. The program evacuates Jewish children living in the contaminated areas to Israel. To date, CCOC has evacuated 1,838 children, ages six to twelve, on forty-six flights.

In Israel, the children receive medical, social, nutritional, and educational care. Additionally, CCOC sends regular shipments of medical supplies and equipment to hospitals and orphanages in Belarus and Ukraine.

Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl is a program of Tzeirei Agudas Chabad in Israel. For more information, contact: Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl, P.O.B. 14, Kfar Chabad, Israel. Phone number: 972-3-9607-588, ext. 161. E-mail: tzachhg@trendline.co.il The United States office can be reached at: 212-681-7800; E-mail: chernobylkids@aol.com