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After the Chernobyl disaster: Children around Erding were given a break from the radiation

2021-05-01T04:44:11.214Z


The Erdinger Aid for Chernobyl Children offered girls and boys the opportunity to vacation in the healthy West. In the meantime the association has disbanded, a helper remembers.


The Erdinger Aid for Chernobyl Children offered girls and boys the opportunity to vacation in the healthy West.

In the meantime the association has disbanded, a helper remembers.

Inning am Holz / District

- Korotkij is located in the south of Belarus, in the Gomel region, on the border with Ukraine, only a few kilometers outside the still valid exclusion zone around Chernobyl.

It's a small village, there is a collective farm and a school, said Beate Neumeier-Brandl from Großwimpasing, Inning am Holz community.

For a long time she was a board member of the Erdinger Aid for Chernobyl Children Association.

Exactly 35 years ago this village was directly affected by the reactor disaster, in the following three decades a close relationship developed between the children and youth of Korotkij and many families in the Erding district.

Every year in July a fully occupied Belarusian bus made the 27-hour journey west.

The last trip took place in 2018, two years ago the association disbanded.

There were several reasons for this, on both sides of the partnership.

In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko has shaped relations with the numerous German aid organizations for children since 1994.

More and more conditions made the trips abroad more difficult.

This went so far that the children of Korotkij had to drive to Minsk, 350 kilometers away, to take their fingerprints there.

The exchange with the ideologically and economically distant West was not welcomed in Belarus.

Difficulties of a completely different kind also arose on the part of the district of Erding: With increasing time lag to the worst-case scenario, the willingness of the people to help apparently decreased. It had become more and more difficult to find host families for the children. Many newspaper clippings with appeals, collected by Neumeier-Brandl in a folder, bear witness to this. The 56-year-old is also thinking of a structural change in the family, more and more often both parents are working and can no longer take in guest children - ideally always two.

The final end of the Erdinger aid for Chernobyl children was the fruitless search for new board members who should have been willing to invest a lot of time and work. “We really did a lot of work, the organization started back in January. The offices in the board of directors were often only exchanged. For years we looked for and searched for new officials, ”remembers Beate Neumeier-Brandl, who was active until the end.

The financial aspect of the four-week stay was never insignificant, around 10,000 euros had to be collected every year for it.

The bus trip and the insurance of the children devoured the largest share, plus there were expenses for the program, for example the entrance fee for the Bayernpark.

But this was always achieved through donations and the active commitment of the association members, for example through the sale of cakes.

At the end of the club's history, there was even money left that went to the children's cancer aid, therapeutic riding in Taufkirchen, the Taufkirchen middle school and the Moosen elementary school.

Like many Erdinger families, Neumaier-Brandl still maintains contact with Korotkij, especially with Stas, whom she first visited as a kindergarten child at her home in Großwimpasing.

She sends today's sixth graders Milka chocolate, Nutella or gummy bears for Christmas.

And his mother, who came to Bavaria as a supervisor and interpreter, is also given consideration.

Neumeier-Brandl is now involved in the project “Together for one another”, in which she looks after senior citizens.

She is still grateful to all club members, helpers, host parents and sponsors.

A project with the association came to an end that was far from over.

A medical examination by Erdinger Aid for Chernobyl Children had shown that 80 percent of the radioactive iodine with which the children arrived was broken down during the four-week stay.

The closest local Chernobyl children's association with a different concept is in Anzing, Ebersberg district.

Fabian Holzner

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-05-01

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