Today I finished watching the HBO series Chernobyl. It’s a talented work, no doubt about that. Although I noticed certain discrepancies. Obviously, Chernobyl is not a documentary but still…The thing is that I was exactly 3 months old when the tragedy in Prypiat happened. I was born on January 26, 1986 in Kyiv ( it is 100 km( 62 miles) away from Chernobyl).
The next day after the explosion our neighbor noticed people measuring radiation with dosemeters in the city. He told everyone about his assumptions and warned us not to go outside for a while. The authorities were undermining the scale of the nuclear catastrophe for awhile. But Ukrainians, as well as other Soviet people at the time, always followed their gut feeling and never truly believed the propaganda of the USSR mass media. So my father, God rest his soul, went to buy us plane tickets to the Eastern Ukraine. We had relatives living there. It was a much safer place for an infant than Kyiv. He did get the tickets after 24 hour waiting in line. A lot of people were fleeing in May 1986. We left home on May 9 ( ironically, it was a Victory Day ) and came back by the end of August. When I ask my mom about the feelings she had at that time, she simply says: “It was scary. I wish I could erase that period of my life from memory”.
What I am trying to say is that Chernobyl affected every life in Ukraine, Belarus and other countries that got radiation.
I keep on thinking about the possible 2nd explosion. Thank goodness, it was prevented. Otherwise millions of people would have been dead, including me…
In Ukraine we used to commemorate the heroes and the victims of Chernobyl on April 26. And nobody really talks about them the rest of the year. Growing up I have never truly realized how dramatic the Prypiat tragedy was, how many lives it ruined, how much it affected all of us in a way we might not even understand. I realize it now.
Vichnaya pamyat ( eternal memory) to everyone who suffered and died. I bow down to their courage and sacrifice.
Ukrainian in Philly 