Before 1989 there was the only House of infants in Minsk, where denied children of pre-school age were kept. Later an amount of children with congenital decease increased rapidly. Perhaps, social immorality and bad influence of Chernobyl told on their life. This is the basic reason why the specialized House for children with physical and mental disabilities was opened.

Approaching this dilapidated building, loosed in a private houses area, any one unwittingly expects dull pictures, accosted with a word «orphanage». Chipped walls, fading flowers in a clay pot on the stairs...

When a doctor Valentina Smolskaya showed us the rooms, gray Colours had flown straight away. Big light rooms, good furniture, nice carpets on the floor, a lot of toes there.

It seems that we found ourselves in an exemplary kindergarten. Kids were just coming back from the daily walk and plaid on the floor. There was something wrong in their eyes.

Here all the kids have Day disease - says Valentina Michaylovna, simpler saying - imbecility. They use to start saying words in the age of four. Nevertheless they are play full and know their names. This children like very much to imitate adult’s behavior. We even manage to carry on some kind of morning performance.

At the age of six the children get status of disability. The only place to be expected for them is a Madhouse. They are absolutely hopeless in study. There is nothing left but to adopt them to living conditions. We teach them to count, to distinguish colors, to use table spoon.

It was so painful to look at this kids. The poor ones can’t realize how hopeless they are.

The most miserable episodes I saw in the chamber for seriously ill kids.

The children laid in their small beds with diagnosis: cerebral paralysis; microcephaly, cardinal inadequacy etc. Only few of them usually live till their youth.

The kids here are in a very bad condition - Valentina Michaylovna continues. Every six or eight of them die. For instance, this boy has a dropsy. Both his cerebral hems phase don’t functional. He is damp and blind and can’t move. The next bed a girl was sleeping. Her head was so little as a fist. She suffers from microcephala . She weights only 10 kg, although she is 4,5 y.o. Near was a boy in epileptic fit. He’s being in such condition for round the clock. Honestly, I couldn’t stay watching at these kid’s fortress. They don’t live, they are existing. Of course, They have parents, but it happens very seldom when someone express any concern of their kids. From the other side these children need a constant special nursing. Particularly it’s clear, why they are abandoned. But who must be accused of their birth?

Vladimir Volchkov.