Many tears were shed when Lena Maslov was reunited this week at Ben-Gurion Airport with her children, 11-year-old Yula and 10-year-old Igor.
Although the vast majority of Russian children come to Israel with their families, Yula and Igor were sent ahead more than a year ago to receive medical treatment.
Natives of Gomel, the city with the highest rate of thyroid cancer in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the children were evacuated to Israel by the Children of Chernobyl project.
A decade after the reactor released at least 100 times more radiation than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, the Chabad organization, which runs the Children of Chernobyl program, marked this week’s somber anniversary by bringing another 20 children to Israel.
While those still living in the radiation-affected areas had little to celebrate this week, the scene at the airport was anything but downbeat.
As the newcomers entered the arrivals area, they were greeted by 30 “old- timers” — Russian children evacuated by Chabad in recent years who now reside at Kfar Chabad, not far from the airport.
As the waiting children sang Israeli songs, Lena Maslov fiercely hugged her two children, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I have not seen them for so long, I’m truly overwhelmed,” she said through a Russian translator.
Her visit, to see her children and to learn more about Israel, was sponsored by Chabad.
This week’s evacuation — the 23rd since Chabad began its program in 1990 – – brought the number of Children of Chernobyl evacuees to 1,300.
At a cost of nearly $15,000 per year, Chabad identifies children at risk in the former Soviet Union, flies them to Israel and houses them in dormitories at Kfar Chabad.
There, the children are examined for signs of radiation poisoning and receive state-of-the art medical care.
About 40 percent of those evacuated suffer from some degree of thyroid disease, a possible precursor to thyroid cancer.
The children, based at Kfar Chabad until their parents make aliyah, also receive their education at Chabad schools.
Although the children themselves tend to be secular, the environment is religious in nature.
Once their parents make aliyah, usually within two or three years, the children leave the program and go to local, usually non-religious schools.
In addition to the 1,300 Chabad evacuees, more than 150,000 Jews from the contaminated areas have immigrated to Israel in recent years, and tens of thousands have moved to the United States and other Western countries.
While thousands of the youngest victims have come with their families, thousands more remain behind because their parents cannot or will not leave the former Soviet Union.
At least 10 percent of the nearly 5 million people touched by Chernobyl’s radioactive could were Jews.
When a nuclear accident at the Chernobyl plant occurred April 26, 1986, a radioactive cloud ascended above western Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The area, once referred to as the Jewish Pale of Settlement, had been an enormous ghetto where 5 million Jews were forced to live from the late 1700s to the early 1900s.
At the time of the reactor meltdown, an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 Jews still resided in the region.
According to research studies, the 4.9 million victims of Chernobyl have a higher-than-average risk of developing radiation-linked illnesses.
Because the Chernobyl accident was unprecedented, and because radiation illnesses can take decades to develop, Chernobyl’s legacy of illness is still uncertain.
There are also indications that Jews appear to be more susceptible to the damaging effects of radiation than non-Jews.
A report recently published by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements found that the rate of radiation-induced thyroid cancer was three times higher in Ashkenazi Jews and nine times higher in Jews of North African descent than it was in the general population.
What is certain, says Jay Litvin, the organization’s medical liaison, “is that radiation poisoning is a potential time bomb. When they arrive, many of the children have thyroid problems and weakened immune systems.
“Within a few months of leaving the contaminated areas, their health begins to improve. Just eating non-contaminated food, breathing non-contaminated air makes a difference.”
On average, childhood thyroid cancer in the affected areas has jumped 200- to 300-fold, though the incidence is still extremely low, because thyroid cancer is extremely rare. There also appears to be a greater risk of leukemia.
In the former Soviet Union, medical studies have shown a higher rate of birth defects, causing many couples to avoid having children.
With thousands of Jewish children still living in places such as Gomel and Kiev, where contaminants remain in the food chain, Chabad officials say they will continue their work as long as funds can be raised.
More than 80 percent of the cost of maintaining the children comes from private donations.
Litvin says Chabad has also been sympathetic to the needs of non-Jewish children.
“We would like to help every affected child, but we are a Jewish organization and our first responsibility is to help Jewish children,” he said.
“About a year ago, we began sending food and medicine to hospitals in the contaminated areas, and these supplies help both Jews and non-Jews.”
Of all the people who had come to welcome the newly arrived children, perhaps the most affected was Yisrael Meir Lau, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel.
Lau, a child Holocaust survivor who lost almost every person dear to him in the Shoah, could barely contain tears of joy as he watched Lena Maslov embrace her children.
Referring to the fact that the children arrived Tuesday, when Israel held Memorial Day ceremonies to honor its fallen soldiers, Lau said, “I’ve come just now from the national memorial at Har Herzl, where 18,200 fallen soldiers were honored. We paid tribute to the past, to the sons and daughters who sacrificed themselves to give us a chance to live in Eretz Yisrael.
“Now, watching these children, I see the fruit that will promise us the future. With God’s help, the future of the entire Jewish family is in our hands.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
