On a warm spring evening on the last day of April 1986, my grandmother, a doctor, rushed to my parents’ house after work.
“Don’t take Zoya outside and close the windows,” she told my mother. “Something has happened.”
Earlier that day, a colleague whose husband was a high-ranking KGB officer had whispered that an accident had occurred up north.
My grandmother had never heard of Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant operating near the small town of Pripyat.
Staying indoors was easier said than done. My parents, my sister and I lived in one room in a stuffy communal apartment in Chernivitz, Ukraine — 597 …read more
Source: POLITICO – Europe Edition
