“Wormwood Star”
In the center of Chernobyl town is the Memorial Park “Wormwood Star.” White crosses stand along its main alley. There are a lot of them, 188 in all, with two signs hanging on each: the “beginning” and the “end” of a settlement with that name.
The construction of the memorial park began in 2010. Then, despite the protests of former residents of the city, an entire residential area was demolished. So, the former residents of Chernobyl were deprived of the opportunity to come to their native threshold at least once a year. The opening of the memorial complex was timed with the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl NPP disaster. The name was taken from the Bible: in the Book of Revelation of St. John the Theologian (Apocalypse), the final book of the New Testament, the Star of Wormwood is mentioned, which fell to the ground when the Third Angel sounded his trumpet. After that, a third of the waters became bitter. Since one of the names of the herb wormwood is chernobylnik, many believe that the Bible predicted the Chernobyl disaster.
The Memorial Park “Wormwood Star.”
Several monuments from other parts of the Exclusion Zone were brought to the memorial park, for example, a statue of a bull and a tamer. There is also a monument dedicated to the tragic events of Fukushima, as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The compositional center is the trumpeting Third Angel made from rebar. He stands on a large concrete slab that resembles a map of the Exclusion Zone. Opposite, in the former cinema “Ukraina”, there are several halls with various expositions on the subject of the disaster.
This article was published in the book Interesting Chernobyl.
You could download this book in PDF file for free here.
© Sky Horse Publishing House (Kyiv) / Nahs Haus, 2019
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