My grandparents left the Ukraine 80 years ago toward a better life in America. But, imagine they hadn’t. Imagine I was home with a sick child in the bitter Ukrainian winter. Here’s a reporter’s frightening glimpse inside the Ovruch Regional Hospital, near the Belarus border.

“The hospital had no heat or hot water. Patients, including 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.

The hospital’s medicine cabinet was nearly bare, only a shallow row of medicines on the bottom shelf. The hospital supplied no blankets, medicine or food, with families required to provide and pay for everything. Parents spend an entire month’s salary on medical care for their hospitalized children. What parents cannot pay for, their children do not receive.”

In addition to the tenuous health care, my child would be at high risk for radiation related diseases, from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident that released 100 times the radiation of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. The Soviets buried contaminated items from the plant without decontaminating them.
More vulnerable than adults, children exposed to radiation develop thyroid problems and other serious medical conditions. A staggering 90% of children within a 50-mile radius of the explosion, from Belarus and Ukraine—heart of the onetime Pale of Settlement, required immediate medical care.

Children born in the contaminated environment after the accident are at greatest risk; their mortality rate is twice that of other CIS areas.

Food, water and soil continue to be contaminated with cesium, strontium and plutonium. Water supplies worsen as water leaks into the reactor and flows out into rivers and streams. The World Health Organization says that “Currently Belarus and Ukraine are unequipped to handle this problem or to initiate any measures that could possibly mitigate it.”

As signs of disease started to become apparent, Jewish parents besieged the Chabad emissaries in the area to save their children by evacuating them to Israel, where they could live in a clean radiation-free environment. The Lubavitcher Rebbe directed Chabad in Israel to provide a complete and immediate response: to evacuate the children from their surroundings and provide them with medical care, food, education—all the necessities of life for as long as required.

In August 1990, Chabad hastily arranged the first flight of 196 children from the highly contaminated Gomel area. The rescue operation became known as Chabad's Children of Chernobyl.

The first evacuated children were housed in makeshift dormitories and placed under the care of Dr. Zev Weschler, Chief of Radiology at Hadassah Hospital. Food, education and recreation were promptly organized. Within weeks a second flight arrived. By year's end, nearly 400 children were living in Israel, safe from danger.

Within months, a staff of counselors, housemothers, teachers, cooks and cleaners were enlisted. Russian schoolbooks and other educational supplies arrived. Curriculums were developed. Treatment began.

Unforeseen needs developed: psychological care to help children adapt and deal with the relocation; children with learning disabilities; bureaucratic difficulties with Belarus, Ukraine and Russia; expensive treatments for life threatening diseases such as leukemia and brain tumors; the death of a child. Expenses mounted, because the program responded to the danger immediately, and built the infrastructure afterwards. At first, Chabad's Children of Chernobyl was a fledgling organization without support.

An intense fundraising effort was launched, and Jews world-wide responded generously, as the full impact of this disaster and this heroic relief effort became known. Increased funding meant more children transported, with improved medical care, better schools, and recreational activities.

Dormitories were remodeled, playgrounds built, bicycles, toys and computers purchased. The first priority remained continual evacuation of children. Sixty percent of the parents eventually joined their children in Israel.

In Israel, the children receive almost daily medical diagnosis and treatment, including wholesome diets and special vitamin supplements. A full-time pediatrician attends to the children daily. Within a few months of leaving Russia, children’s health starts to improve. The only long-term project for Chernobyl children, serving them through high school, has a long waiting list.

Kfar Chabad village, where many of the children now live, is lined with orange groves and palm trees. Healthy-looking children learn their first Hebrew words. Initial evaluations come at two clinics and a dentist’s office here; advanced treatments are performed at a half-dozen of Israel’s top hospitals. The average cost per child per year is $15,000.

Several hundred CCOC children are presently at Kfar Chabad. The rest have finished their education, married or moved in with their families in Israel. A few have returned to the former Soviet Union.

Like most Jews from once-communist homelands, the children come to Kfar Chabad with minimal Jewish education or identification. When they leave, they’re not Chasidic, but know more about Judaism, and have a warm connection with their heritage.

CCOC looks not only forward, but also back at the bleak situation in the Ukraine. It has spearheaded a number of medical and social relief programs for children and their families still in Ukraine and Belarus.

CCOC has sent the Ovruch Regional Hospital a new operating table. The Zhitomer Oblast Oncology Center received a mammography machine, together with staff training, x-ray films, and informational brochures.

CCOC opened a Stimulation Therapy Room at a Minsk orphanage. Last year, doctors from the Minsk Thyroid Cancer Center came to Israel for two months training under CCOC auspices. Regular shipments of medicine and medical supplies, food, clothing and toys are sent to hospitals and orphanages in the Ukraine. Working in cooperation with other international agencies, CCOC participates in medical research and dissemination of information regarding the consequences of Chernobyl.

To date, this amazing organization has given a new lease on life to 2318 children, arriving on 69 flights. Continued flights and evacuations are planned, the next one in late spring.

Yulia
Within hours of arriving from Gomel, Yulia is checked at the COCC clinic by staff pediatrician, Dr. Marsha Shwartzman. In Belarus, she was diagnosed with an goiter—often a precursor to thyroid cancer— but her parents were unable to find medical care. Yulia now lives on CCOC's girls' campus in Israel.

Back in Gomel, Yulia's mother, Galina, misses her. She is her only child, but she considers herself lucky as thyroid cancer in the affected areas of Ukraine and Belarus is 200-500 times above the norm. Some of Yulia’s friends have already fallen victim. But CCOC provided Yulia’s parents with their first glimmer of hope. She arrived in Israel on COCC’s 51st flight.

ELENA
Raisa is a meteorologist in her hometown of Chernihiv. Alex, her husband, has worked for over fifteen years as a construction engineer. Their daughter Elena had the good fortune to be accepted to the COCC Project four years ago. Her chronic asthma has improved, her thyroid is smaller and functioning better, and her headaches have disappeared.

She constantly tells her parents how much she misses them, but her letters are so enthusiastic about her new life that they have ceased to worry. In a recent letter of thanks they wrote:

“At first we were concerned about sending our daughter away. But now we see that you are providing Elena with a warm, supportive, loving home with all the education, medical care, and other things she needs to live a happy, healthy childhood.”

The program is funded exclusively by donations.
CHABAD’S CHILDREN OF CHERNOBYL
675 THIRD AVENUE, SUITE 3210
NEW YORK, NY 10017
For further information, visit www.CCOC.net