Memories of Chernobyl

On April 26, 1986, an explosion occurred at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Boris Kimlat, who was living 80 miles away in Kiev with his wife Irina Khazina, mother-in-law Inna Shatsman, and two small children, was completely unaware of the debacle. Little did he know that dangerous levels of radioactive contamination were being released into the atmosphere and spreading across the Soviet Union and into Western Europe.

“The next day, I came into work and noticed my coworker looking out the window,” Boris remembers. “From our vantage point, we could see hundreds of vehicles headed towards Chernobyl, so we knew something was up.”

Rumors circulated about an explosion at the power plant, but official information was intentionally scarce. Still, less than a week later on the Communist holiday May Day (May 1), everyone was required to participate in the celebratory parades to support workers and trade unions.

“Nobody was warned about radiation, so we went into the streets to celebrate like good citizens,” says Boris, father of local magician Kostya Kimlat, the subject of J Life’s Fall ‘18 cover. “We soon learned from the BBC and Voice of America about the accident and how serious it was.”

Boris immediately took action to protect his family. He went to a special government office to get permission to take his daughter, Jenya, out of third grade early. The plan was to send his entire family, including then-three-year-old Kostya, to Moscow, which was 512 miles from Chernobyl.

“I went to the train station, and I distinctly remember two old men fighting with their canes for tickets,” Boris says. “Real panic was setting in, but I was able to get them out.”

With his family safe, Boris could rest easier, but he had to remain in Kiev to work.

“It became a city of only men because the women and children had been sent to safer locations,” he remembers. “Ironically, Kiev is beautiful in the summer, plus you can’t see radiation, so everything looked normal, but it wasn’t.”

In August, Boris was ordered to the last civil outpost before the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – an 18-mile radius around the stricken power plant. He was placed with a national guard unit and tasked with measuring all outgoing vehicles for radiation pollution. He and his team used radiation-detection tools called dosimeters, and if a vehicle was dirty, it was sent back to a   military station within the zone for disinfection.

“We worked 24-hour shifts and then were sent back to Kiev for three days,” Boris explains. “This went on for an entire year, but we actually felt good about what we were doing because we were protecting Kiev from radiation exposure. We wore  special rubber boots but were given nothing else in the way of real protection.”

The Kimlats all returned to Kiev in the fall of 1986. In 1992, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, they were able to learn more details about the Chernobyl incident and its partial cover-up from Western media outlets. Boris and his family immigrated to the United States later in 1992 and settled in Central Florida with the help of HIAS and the local Jewish Community Center.

“We were all exposed to radiation to some degree, but getting my family to Moscow for those few months following the explosion saved their health,” says Boris, who has never experienced signs of ill health as a direct result of his exposure. “Looking back now, I realized we became united trying to protect our families and our country from this disaster, but the fact our government didn’t protect its citizens the way it should have, especially the children and the elderly, is a horrible shame.”