This is a photograph of an event sponsored by Chabad-Lubavitch celebrating the airlift of children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to Israel. The event took place on April 25, 1994 in Jerusalem’s Independence Park. The photograph shows some of the 200 Chabad “Chernobyl Children” who gathered in Jerusalem's Independence Park to celebrate the airlift of 1,001 children to Israel from Belarus and Ukraine. The children released 1,001 balloons to symbolise the work done so far and the work that Chabad was still planning to do, i.e., the airlift of the next thousand children. The photograph shows a group of boys from Belarus and Ukraine wearing purple t-shirts and baseball hats with the number 1,001 printed on them. They are sitting on the grass in the park and bunches of colourful balloons can be seen in the background.
The disaster at Chernobyl, Ukraine on April 26, 1986 released the equivalent of ten times the volume of poisonous gases into the environment than the atomic bomb that fell over Hiroshima at the end of World War II. World Health Organisation figures claim that the incidence of thyroid cancer in the region is eighty times over the norm. Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl project removed the victims from the area on a permanent basis and provided them with intensive treatment by top physicians at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem to prevent the development of radiation sickness. The children stayed in dormitories in the central Israel town of Kfar Chabad until they were reunited with their parents, mostly in Israel. In total, Chabad brought 2,878 children to Israel on 100 flights.
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Jewish Community of Ukraine – Jews first arrived in Ukraine in the ninth century seeking refuge from Byzantium, Persia, and Mesopotamia. Jews were allowed to practice Judaism openly and prospered during this period. In the 1500s, a large influx of Jews from Western Europe arrived in Ukraine, which became an important centre of Jewish life. However, in the ensuing periods, anti-Semitic sentiment grew in Ukraine, and the Cossack uprising of 1648 resulted in the murder of over 20,000 Jews and the departure of many others to more tolerant countries. At the end of the eighteenth century, Ukraine was made a part of the Russian Pale of Settlement. Although this was a difficult period for Ukrainian Jews, new ideas and organisations developed such as Hasidism, the Haskalah (the Jewish enlightenment), and Zionism. As a result of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Pale of Settlement was dissolved and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews moved to other parts of the Soviet Union. Under communism, Jewish and Zionist activity moved underground as the party did not allow such activity. During the Holocaust, it is believed that a million Jews were killed in Ukraine, including those killed in a large massacre at Babi Yar and others murdered by the Einsatzgruppen. The Germans were joined by Ukrainian collaborators, and according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, “Ukraine has, to the best of our knowledge, never conducted a single investigation of a local Nazi war criminal, let alone prosecuted a Holocaust perpetrator.” After the war, Jews who returned to their former homes in Ukraine were met with hostility by the local population. In the 1980s and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many Ukrainian Jews emigrated to Israel and other countries. Currently, Ukrainian Jewish life is being rebuilt, with various Jewish denominations active. Today, the Jewish community of Ukraine is the fourth largest Jewish community in Europe and the eleventh in the world, with an estimated population of up to 140,000 people.
Chabad – Chabad is an acronym which stands for Chochmah, Binah, and Daat (wisdom, comprehension, and knowledge) and is the organization of the Lubavitch sect of Hasidism. The word “Lubavitch” comes from the name of the town in Russia where the movement was based. In keeping with Hasidic tradition, Chabad-Lubavitch was led by a rabbinic dynasty that began with Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812), who wrote the Tanya which is a foundational text for the movement. The last Lubavitcher Rebbe was Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994). Rabbi Schneerson, known simply as the Rebbe, instituted an outreach movement that placed rabbinic representatives, shluchim, and their families in communities around the world, with the aim of helping Jews to learn about and perform mitzvot. There are currently around 5,000 shluchim in over 100 countries, with Chabad headquarters in the United States and Israel.
