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Terry Hallman (American living in Ukraine) wrote an blog/opinion piece that he titled Ukraine’s Death Camps for Children. I really didn’t like the emotional language that he choose to use.
I did an informal poll. I cannot find a single person (friend, family or stranger in the parking lot) who didn’t think Holocaust when I said “death camp”. But Terry and a few other folks don’t seem to understand why his useage of “death camp” triggers some negative reactions.
I blogged about my background in relationship to the Ukrainian orphanage system. I adopted from a very poor specialized (handicapped) orphanage in a rural village right outside of Kharkiv.
I have been bugged by my response to this opinion piece for some time. I cannot call it a news article because it has a very clear bias… And is one sided. But there is enough truth in it that I re-read it occasionally.
And I finally (thanks to Hills333 on FRUA) have figured out what is bugging me.
It isn’t written truefully but it does contain truth. There are children and orphanages that need help. But not all the orphanages have major issues.
Between 5% to 10% of families adopting from Ukraine will adopt from a specialized orphanage or an internat. These may be the orphanages Terry is talking about. It is difficult to tell since Terry hasn’t provided any level of detail. Is he just talking about the level 4 orphanages (locked down long-term care for the severely disabled)?
There is no grand conspiracy to hide the truth about these orphanages. Information and pictures are available on the internet.
Some of them just break your heart. Look at Life2Orphans’ Bedridden Orphans Project.
Imagine being bedridden 24 hours a day, 365.25 days of the year, your whole life until you die. Confined to a room with no way to view or participate in the world. With nothing to do all day except stare at the walls and roof. The months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds stretch into an eternity.
Sometimes it doesn’t take very much to help the situation (notice that I didn’t say solve). Life2Orphans started sending money for extra food, toys. Adults started visiting the children.
Director told now, that as they started to use 20% of the pensions of kids (Bedridden Sponsorship Money) for feeding them, some bedridden children started to stand up on their feet!!!
And yes there is no getting around it. Children die in orphanages. Children die in hospitals. Children die in the family home. Some of them were medically fragile. And some die from common illnesses like Chicken Pox, which happens even in this country.
And sometimes a child dies in an orphanage.. and their death could have been prevented. And this really sucks.
While visiting an orphanage in Ukraine, Bob and Kathy Drane and their daughter Jessica fell in love with 22-month-old Olla and her twin sister Natasha and set out to adopt both girls. During the eight-month adoption process, Natasha developed pneumonia due to severe winter weather and inadequate conditions in the orphanage and died.
“A little child died because no one cared enough to buy $10 worth of penicillin for her,” said Drane. “She died and I still see that little face.”
Specialized and Internat Ukrainian Orphanages
Ukraine’s Death Camps for Children
I Adopted From A Specialized Orphanage
Do Children Die at Ukrainian Orphanages?
Ukrainian Orphanage Blogs
(where to find stories and pictures of specialized or internat orphanages)
Berdyansk, Vinnitsa, Uzhgorod, Zhytomyr
Dnepro, Volhynia, Odessa
Crimea, Donetsk, Kyiv, Kharkiv
Kramatorsk
