Adi Roche

Please take a few minutes and order the book by ADI ROCHE
Children of Chernobyl 
                      is Adi Roche's vivid and shocking account
                      of the 1986 disaster and its aftermath. Although its conclusions are
                      depressing and contrast strongly with the claims of the nuclear
                      industry, the book also records the efforts of the individual offering
                      hope to live and the hand of friendship to the embattled people of
                      Belarus, Western Russia and the Ukraine. 

                      ALL ROYALTIES FROM THE SALE OF THIS BOOK WILL GO TO
                      THE CHERNOBYL CHILDREN'S PROJECT.

here is a link to the book:
http://www.adiccp.org/
 

      An Excerpt from the book:
                      Emma's Story

                      'It's not so easy for a mother and granny to share sad experiences,
                      especially if they concern children. The emotional damage to our
                      people is a terrible thing. 

                      'Two weeks after the accident I was returning home by train from
                      visiting my son in Moscow, who was serving time in the army. There
                      were four of us in the compartment. I have very vague memories of
                      two men who were in the same compartment with me, but the face
                      of the third stands out quite vividly in my memory. He was a soldier,
                      a boy of 19. He was overwhelmed with sorrow; there was no joy in
                      his eyes. He couldn't forget the last couple of days of his life. He
                      was one of those participating in burying the perished from
                      Chernobyl. Here is his story. 

                      "'Five dead firemen were brought to the cemetery in Moscow. There
                      were five groups of soldiers, so-called teams, who were to perform
                      the funerals of the dead liquidators. All of us had to wear special
                      suits and masks for the burials. The worst part was telling the
                      relatives of the perished that they could not come close to the
                      bodies of their dead. Mothers were crying because they were
                      forbidden to hug their precious sons and husbands and to say the
                      last "good-bye". The bodies and the coffins were highly radioactive
                      and dangerous.

                      "As soon as one of the victims had been buried in a locked and
                      covered coffin into an unusually deep pit, the first group of young
                      soldiers, including me, was made to rush into a spccial bus which
                      took us to some kind of a sauna where we quickly took off the suits
                      and had a shower. Our reward is ten days' leave home, but I don't
                      feel any joy about it any more." 

                      'Three years ago I had to spend a lot of time in hospital myself with
                      cancer and saw with my own eyes and lived through the sufferings
                      of some of them. I knew a girl, Lida by name, 14 years old, who
                      suffered so much because she had to wear a kerchief all the time,
                      even when the weather was hot. She lived in Chernobyl itself and
                      became completely bald. It is a new disease from Chernobyl and
                      they say it has no cure. She didn't want to see her classmates; she
                      refused to see even neighbours. She felt ashamed, but why should
                      she? 'There were many very small children in Borovlyany hospital at
                      that time from the contaminated zone. The majority of them had
                      physical defects; they couldn't walk, radiation affected their bones.
                      Their poor Mummies had to carry them in their hands, even to the
                      building where patients got radiation treatment.

                      When a patient gets this treatment, he or she has to lie motionless.
                      Can a little child of three or four or five do that for four minutes? No,
                      of course not. And because of this every day the poor little children
                      were made to sleep with drugs. I can't imagine how their mothers'
                      hearts could bear that. When you are waiting for your turn, you can
                      watch those who are getting the radiation treatment on a television
                      screen. Even men couldn't stand that; their eyes were full of tears. 

                      Another thing that struck me there was the children's indifference to
                      everything and everybody. When they were given toys or sweets,
                      they wouldn't even look at them, wouldn't turn their heads. Some
                      remained indifferent in their beds even if their mothers tried to
                      entertain them by telling funny stories. They would lie staring into
                      the ceiling or window. It was hard to say whether they were alive or
                      not. Our hearts were bleeding. I can tell you frankly that we women
                      cursed Chernobyl and those who were guilty for the lack of
                      medicine. I'm sure that many of those little ones who died would
                      have survived if they had been given the actual treatment they
                      needed.

                      'I feel full responsibility for what I say. Once, two years ago, I was in
                      Druzhny with a group of foreigners as a translator. Druzhny is a
                      settlement which was erected for the evacuated families. Living
                      conditions there were extremely bad. We visited a family of nine
                      who lived in a flatlet of 24 square metres in total. Moreover, a girl of
                      eleven months had cancer, her granny was in bed with cancer and
                      her father was very ill. Our doctors couldn't cure the child, but one of
                      the Canadians who had a daughter at home of the same age took
                      the girl to Canada and she was cured! 

                      'When the bus with the group of foreigners was ready to leave,
                      many Belarussian mothers surrounded it. All of them had their sick
                      babies in their hands. Crying, they addressed the Canadian,
                      pleading: 'Take mine, please take mine. Cure mine. My baby is
                      dying. Let me even not see him ever again, but let him be healthy
                      and live in another country . . .' Can you imagine? Mothers so
                      desperate to save their children that they would give them away to a
                      stranger! It is terrible. 

The All Planet Euro 2000 Team