Radioactive fallout spread across much of the globe, but the area of
greatest contamination lay in Chernobyl and its surrounding areas — the
thousands of acres spanning northern Ukraine, southern Belarus, and
western Russia. Today, Chernobyl’s thirty-kilometer circumference is a
“dead zone.” It is one of several closed areas in Ukraine and Belarus
that are deemed too dangerous to inhabit--though some people continue
to live there. Today, thousands of people still live in Russia,
Belarus, and Ukraine, the region affected by the radiation generated
from Chernobyl and the area once known as the Jewish Pale of
Settlement.
The “Pale” of Settlement was an enormous ghetto where five
million Jews were forced to live, from 1795-1917. Jews were transported
to this area by the Russian empire when the tsar forcibly removed them
from their homes. It was an area of mob violence and government
enforced brutality. In 1986, almost exactly the same area was hit once
again, this time by the Chernobyl poisons.
