  |
|
|
|
Facts on Dark travel in UkraineChernobyl, Babyn Yar Massacre, the Start football team, Kiev.The Ukraine is a wonderful country with a dark past, as the heartbreaking stories of the Chernobyl museum, Babyn Yar and the Start football team in Kyiv prove.
ChernobylOn April 26th, 1986, the world experienced its worst ever nuclear disaster. One of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, close to the border with Belarus, exploded, sending nine tonnes of radioactive matter into the atmosphere. To get an idea of the scale, you need to consider that this was 90 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. If you travel here today: Astonishingly, there are tour companies that are happy to lead tourists into the area. Their claims of it all being perfectly safe are contradicted by the fact that the reactor is still burning and unstable under a thick tomb of concrete. There are also plenty of plutonium isotopes, and they won’t decompose for another 20,000 years. If you do take on the risk, however, you will see some incredibly sad sights. Even worse than the ghost towns are the small homes of those who refused to leave. A better option is to go to the Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv, which covers the disaster and the consequences far better than any tour. StartDuring the Second World War, a team of former top division footballers got together whilst working in a bakery. After a series of good results, the Nazi occupiers put them up against top sides from Romania and Hungary in a bid to keep spirit down. However, the side – called Start – kept winning and were eventually put up against a German Luftwaffe side that had never lost. The Start players were given hints that if they didn’t lose the match, consequences would be dire, but they decided to play as normal. They refused to do the Nazi salute before the game, and whilst winning 5-3, a defender symbolically chose not to score an open goal, instead kicking the ball back to the centre circle to add to the Germans’ humiliation. A few days later, those working at the bakery were rounded up by the Gestapo, and tortured. One was shot, whilst the others were sent off to die in work camps. The tragic tale was the inspiration for the 1981 film Escape To Victory, in which a group of prisoners of war (including Pele, Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone) took on the German national team. If you travel here today: A monument to the players can be found outside the Dynamo Stadium. This is where Dynamo Kyiv – who the majority of the Start players played for before the war – play their domestic league games. Babyn Yar, KievThis was the most horrific spot during the Nazi occupation of Kyiv. Between 1941 and 1943, around 100,000 people – mostly Jews – were massacred here, then left to rot in a mass grave. On two dreadful days alone, September 29th and 30th, 1941, 33,771 Jews were slaughtered. They were lined up at the edge of the ravine, overlooking the bodies of those who died before them, then summarily shot dead. If you travel here today: It’s perhaps not as moving as it ought to be. There is a memorial park there, with a monument remembering the dead. However, there are continual arguments about what to do with the site, with various ethnic groups proposing different ideas. Read up on the massacre before you go to get the proper impact.
The copyright of the article Facts on Dark travel in Ukraine in Historical Vacations is owned by David Whitley. Permission to republish Facts on Dark travel in Ukraine in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
|
|
|
|
