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Published: March 25th 2009
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Cemtery
Notice the people having a meal at the gravesite to honor the departed on a 40-day or 1-year anniversary of the death. We started the day by sleeping until 8:30! I guess it was the 1 AM wakeup call in Jerusalem the day before that made us such lazy bones. The girls leave for school at 8, so we missed them entirely this morning. We did, however, have time for some breakfast before Jon loaded us up in his car and took us touring.
First visit was the cemetery. It’s huge! I’d say it’s about 1.5 to 2 miles square and is just row after row of burial plots. The plots are all fenced into square little corrals where there is normally just one body buried. Occasionally, the plots are designed for a husband and wife although they are large enough to accommodate at least four deceased.
The Ukrainian custom is to visit the grave on the one day, 40 day and one year anniversary of the person’s death. The process is then repeated annually on the date of the person’s death. Often the family shares a meal at the burial site. We witnessed a couple of those visitations even though it’s still quite chilly in mid-March in Kyiv.
Our next stop on the Dark Day Tour was Babi Yar.
Babi Yar Memorial
Nearly 34,000 were gunned down and buried in a common grave by the Nazis here in one day. This is a ravine and monument/park where during the brief occupation by the Nazis during WWII, nearly all the Jewish inhabitants of Kyiv ere slaughtered and buried in a common grave. On one day nearly 34,000 Jews were called together into the ravine and systematically gunned down by the Nazis.
Following that delightful stop, we went to the hospital area of Kyiv. There are 5 hospitals in town, all situated on a single street. Jon wanted to show us the conditions that exist with medial care in a Communist/post-Communist country. He warned us that the conditions would be similar to 1950’s US hospitals. I think what we saw was closer to 1920’s or 1930’s. We saw people sitting on benches in hallways were awaiting treatment. Their relatives would need to bring them bedding, food and the necessary medical supplies to accomplish their treatment..
Theoretically, if one needs a procedure, say an appendectomy, you would go to the hospital, schedule the operation and get your appendix taken out. In reality, you would have to wait an interminable amount of time, perhaps years for an appointment to even see the physician. As a practical matter, you would find a doctor
Chernobyl
Museum model of Power Plant #3 that melted down. by way of a referral from friends, see the doctor, agree upon the price for the operation, get a list of the supplies (bandages, gauze, cotton balls, alcohol, etc. etc.) purchase those items and show up at the appointed time for your appendectomy. Once the procedure is done, you would be put up in a room at the hospital, but if you want to be fed, have sheets on your bed, get any post-operative care, it’s up to your family to arrange those things. It’s all pretty depressing.
We walked some of the halls where people sat awaiting consultation or treatment and just kind of stared back at us as we passed by. The paint on the walls and ceilings was chipped and peeling. The rooms themselves were about the size of a standard double hospital room in the US but housed a 6-bed ward or more. I’m sure glad we didn’t need medical treatment in Ukraine, or Russia for that matter.
After our cheery time with the hospital visit, we went to the Chernobyl Museum. Chernobyl is located about 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of Kyiv. You may recall the meltdown of the nuclear power plant that occurred there in 1986. As it turns out, the Soviets (Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union until it dissolved in 1989) were conducting a test on one of the four reactors at the plant when it melted down, ran amok and contaminated hundreds, no thousands of square miles with radioactivity.
They tried to cover up the disaster by just not telling the world what happened. Two days after the accident, Norway questioned Moscow as to what this terrible radioactive cloud was that’s floating over their country.
The museum has copies on display of the New York Times and Pravda (USSR’s main newspaper) from three days after the disaster. The Times has huge headlines and nearly the whole of page one devoted to the story of the power plant meltdown. Pravda had about 2 column inches on page 8 covering the story.
After three days, the authorities told the 600,000 people in the nearby towns that they were being evacuated as a precautionary measure. They were told to pack up enough food, water and belongings for three days. They were told they’d be returned home after that length of time. No one has ever returned. The radiation levels are so high that even a few minutes exposure would be fatal.
It is estimated the mount of radiation released when the power plant melted down was approximately 500 times the strength of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of WWII.
Our tour guide made the point that the Bible in Revelation chapter 8 issues a prophesy concerning this disaster. The word translated in our English Bible as Wormwood is Chernobyl in Russian. Here’s the passage:
The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water - the name of the star is Chernobyl. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had turned bitter.
Rev 8:10, 11 NIV (“Chernobyl” is the name printed in the Russian translation of the Bible)
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