Chernobyl

Wikipedia photo

The HBO mini-series Chernobyl is very intense. It is not just an expose of what has actually happened with the nuclear reactor in the former Soviet Union in 1986, but an indictment of the reckless communist rule that has brought to disaster many nations and their wonderful people who allowed themselves to be bullied into the false promises of collectivism and communism, the land of free milk and honey, of impossible equity and equality.

The proletariat suffered greatly at the hands of activists and apparatchiks with a low-grade education, useful idiots who helped implement totalitarian communism, deprivation, and mass starvation. The Marxists, Bolsheviks, Leninists, Stalinists, and Maoists had engineered and were complicit in the death of 100 million people.

In episode 2, a nuclear physicist is trying to explain to the communist secretary in charge of the city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, that he needs to evacuate the town and he responds that there is no danger, the exposure is equal to one x-ray, a bold, fat, and deliberate lie to the public who was kept in the dark during the most essential time when they should have evacuated the residents of the town located three miles from the nuclear reactor which melted down, scattering radioactive graphite everywhere and blowing radioactive fumes and particles into the atmosphere, raining down on unsuspected locals. The wind carried radioactivity all over Germany, Nordic countries, and even to northern Romania.

Frustrated, the physicist tells him, I am sorry Comrade so and so but before you were a local party secretary, you worked in a shoe factory.

His answer, delivered with a distasteful smirk born of ignorance and self-importance, was, yes, but I am in charge here now, not you.

This is typical of the irresponsible comrades who ran the communist countries, all the Soviet satellites - low on education and intoxicated on power, not caring about the dangers that they put millions of people in every day with their Marxist-based crushing rule and ill-informed decisions.

A faithful Russian reader, wondered if the HBO series mentioned that the tragedy was in fact, bound to happen. According to Slava, “Years before the festive inauguration of the Chernobyl’s nuclear station, quite a few inspectors were warning that the construction was done below any standards, thanks to nearly all the contracts being gifted to the corrupt relatives or friends of local party bosses. The general opinion of those brave and honest experts was that, due to constant substitution of good building materials with cheap trash, the future catastrophe would be simply inevitable. Naturally, their written reports were at once gagged and hidden by the communist leadership – you just couldn’t criticize the Party’s projects, especially the top-secret atomic ones. The dreadful truth was declassified in the late nineties.”

In a similar vein, the current young and old American socialists are running our country from Congress openly. Radical socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez comes to mind, a former bartender, with no political or economic knowledge of what it takes to run the largest economy on the planet, now makes fundamental decisions for the future of our country, for our people, via the Green New Deal, not just for 330 million of Americans today, but for generations to come.

P.S. I watched episode three last night and was brought to tears. It was not only the sacrifice innocent Russians had made willingly and unwillingly to save their fellow Russians and the horrible deaths so many suffered. 
It was also the reminder of my past life under the exact communist society, the drab surroundings, the police state everywhere, the lack of rights and self-determination, the bribery of medical personnel to do their jobs, and the sense of hopelessness that I personally had experienced in Romania; it all flooded back with gut-wrenching sobs.
I was never in Chernobyl, thank God, but I felt a sense of kinship with the suffering of fellow communist proletariat subjects who languished and died at the hands of useful idiot apparatchiks. They constantly watched, harassed, and arrested citizens with the all-mighty Security Police branch of oppression called KGB, just for asking questions to get to the truth.

Art Imitates Painful Life

Radu Mihaileanu’s 1999 award winning movie, “Train of Life,” is a metaphor for the resilience of the human spirit and the desire to be free with a decidedly anti-communist and anti-Nazi message.

Art imitates life in a series of comedic one-liners describing a very serious topic, the deportation of the Jews to the concentration camps during World War II. But it is a fairy tale with a twist. An entire shtetl (village) in Eastern Europe is self-deporting to the Promised Land, Eretz, Israel, via Ukraine  - Russia – Palestine, in the year 5701 (1941) on the advice of the “crazy” village fool, Shlomo Rothschild.

The Nazis (National Socialists) have arrived beyond the mountains, deporting Jews, “God knows where,” entire villages are never heard of again and the Rabbi must save his own flock by any means necessary even though it is “a sin to dress up like a Nazi.”

The unnecessary cruelty of man against man is evident in the naïve and innocent question, why would anyone want to kill us, we are nice people and some Germans are nice people. Why don’t they stop them?

“Let the Germans deport us! Let them sweat! Why make it easy for them?” But the Wise Men decide to buy a fake train, supplies, fake documents, tailor German uniforms, and train 30 Jews to be German soldiers and 5 to be officers.

Mordechai Schwarts, the wood merchant, who speaks German and understands German culture, is chosen to be the commander of the train. The locomotive with the 8 wagons has seen better days but, with love, paint, and major repairs, the train is ready to chug along once they find an engineer. Yenkele, the accountant, objects vociferously to the purchase price of 10,000 and the leather seats in the commander’s wagon.

Israel Schmecht, the local writer, teaches the fake Nazi soldiers how to speak German in a precise, dry, and humorless manner. The Rabbi jokes that maybe that’s the reason the world is at war with the Germans, “we make fun of their language.”

A wise woman, unhappy with the idea of leaving their village and homes behind, and with her fellow Jews dressed as shameful Nazis who carry guns, laments on the wisdom of God who lets “men run the world, with a fool to lead them.”

The non-Jewish neighbors are worried that “their Jews” are leaving and they will lose their businesses. The real Germans are burning down their village, their homes and possessions.

The local beauty, Esther, is pursued by many, including Sammy, Mordechai’s rich son, which she prefers, Shlomo, who confesses his love for her, and Yoselle (Yossi), the commune’s young communist agitator. The Rabbi advises everyone to avoid the wayward Yossi because his craziness is contagious. All he talks about is the communist slogan, “Men and women of the world, unite!”

Preaching communism, Yossi, who has shaven his traditional beard, talks about the New Man, enchanting his hapless and rapt audience with the secret Messiah who has arrived and is going to make all men equal and workers, but nobody knows yet who the illusory Messiah is, “it is a code name so he does not get arrested.” But we are not workers, says one, we are Jews.

We revolutionaries stay undercover, said Yossi, we “lurk in the shadows, confronting danger, we’re incognito, stowaways, clandestine, utopians, adventurers.” The Rabbi had had enough and challenges his ridiculous description calling him a “proletarian good for nothing,” rabble rouser.

Finally a train engineer is found -  the shoeless Shtrul Goitzl who works at the Archives, has never driven a train before, but is able to find a manual, “How to Drive a Locomotive.” The locomotive is an absolute piece of junk held together by rust, presented as good as new - once it’s painted red, it will go around the world. The accountant with an ulcer faints.

And so they embark on the train of survival in the middle of the night, each taking with them their most precious possessions. The village fool Shlomo wraps two pebbles carefully in a white handkerchief, symbolizing love for his ancient village, his deep roots, and the hardship ahead.

Past midnight, the children of Abraham and Moses pray one last time and, with fear, joy, anticipation, and faith in their hearts, climb aboard. With a shrill whistle of the engine, the train moves into the night, into the scary and shadowy darkness.

The chugging train has eight cars (wagons), six of which are cattle cars like those that took Jews, gypsies, and other innocents to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Dachau.

The next morning, the mail man arrives with accountant Yenkele’s loan approval but the village is empty, papers flying in the wind in the deserted streets. The mailman is assured that they will come back - Jews are family people, they will “return to their roots.”

Yossi the Marxist, continues his indoctrination on the train. “The poor should be rich and the rich should be poor because it is not their fault that the poor are born poor.” But is it not their fault that they stayed poor?

One young man tells Yossi that he will become a communist when he can keep his side-locks and his faith. That is of course, not permitted, the New Man has to be different than the Old Man. As he continues offering empty promises, Yossi names Sammy their Soviet ideologist.  Sammy declines on account that he has not read Marx but Yossi confesses that neither had he.  

The first station they pass identifies them as a ghost train; the underground resistance plans to blow up the tracks, mistaking them for a real Nazi train, taking Jews to the gas chambers. Without a timetable, it is almost certain they will not be able to pass the next station unless they detour. Eli Grossman, the chess champion, suggests a route detour to avoid detection.

The engineer, full of sweat and oil, wipes his brow of a stray underground resistance flyer that hit his face in the wind – he now has a large black ink Nazi emblem emblazoned squarely on his forehead.

They barely avoid a collision with an oncoming train, the resistance is not sure if they should blow them up or not, while the Germans are loading up troops to search and destroy the abandoned village.

Yossi the Marxist is stirring up trouble, demanding better accommodations for his followers. They want Mordechai’s car and bed. A fascist Nazi should not sleep in better quarters than communists, he says. When the Rabbi defuses the tension by promising everyone beds in Palestine, Yossi laments in typical projective psychology, “Beware of empty promises. The bells of a new era are tolling.”

The resistance fighters decide to let them go unharmed. The train struggles into the night like a sick patient taking a labored and rhythmic breath, trying to stay alive.

A Grandmother soothes her grandchild with stories of “Palestine, an earthly Paradise, with gardens, brooks, animals, birds, and treasures underneath the sand.” In reality, she is holding the fairy tale book, “Little Red Riding Hood.” The symbolism is ever present. The child wonders, “We’ll never make it <alive>, will we?”

When the train stops for Shabbat, Yossi, the communist, advises his flock not to pray, “We are not doing Shabbat, we are Marxist-Leninist materialists now! The Messiah has come! God doesn’t exist!”

A fight ensues as Mordechai, the fake German officer, attacks Yossi, the commie materialist traitor. “Come pray and let the others pray too! You’ll corrupt the children! Dirty communist!”

Shlomo, the “fool,” gets in the middle and embarks on a philosophical monologue on God, man, and creation, concluding with the question “whether we exist.” Shabbat shalom! Did you understand that? One elder responds in total confusion, “God is not sure whether man exists!” To which the Rabbi answers with aplomb, “What am I, a monkey?”

After a series of comedy of errors, the movie ends on the Eastern front with bombs flying around the train in both directions. Shlomo narrates, “Once in the Soviet Union, everyone espoused the communist cause; some went to Palestine, mostly the gypsies, others went to India, mostly the Jews. Shtrul went to China where he became stationmaster. Beautiful Esther went to America and had lots of beautiful children. That’s the true story of my shtetl. Well, almost true.”

As the camera pans out, Shlomo is behind the wired fence of a concentration camp. Was it all true? The story kept him alive, the folly of the train of life.