Ljudmila & Anatolij

In 1986, Ljudmila Ignatenko was 23 years old, very much in love with her husband Vasilij, a fireman, and five months pregnant. They lived in Pripyat, the city built around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. On the night between April 25 and 26 Vasilij was sent out. There was a fire at the nuclear plant. Ljudmila: "We couldn’t imagine that something bad would happen … We wanted to live, we wanted to have children … Later on they were trying to convince me not to go near him, yet I knew that I couldn’t stand not to sit at his bedside. Not be near him. Then he couldn’t stand up anymore. The skin was loose. His body was bleeding … I gave birth to a baby girl and named her Natasha. But
it was not fated for her to live. She stayed alive for only five days. After she died the doctor told me that she had saved me. If it hadn’t been for her, I would have died. All the radioactivity I had breathed in from my husband, she collected in herself." (DOK.fest München)