In 1986, I traveled around the world, visited sixty-two countries and set foot on all seven continents. In the spring of that year, after spending three months in South America and Antarctica, I flew to Madrid, where I rented a car and drove across Europe toward Moscow.

In those days, the Soviet Union controlled the Eastern bloc countries and the Berlin Wall stood thirteen-feet tall. In April of 1986, I drove through Poland with a plan to stop in Kyiv on my way to Moscow. I had acquired my Russian visa in Paris and prepaid for rural campsites and hotel lodging in cities like Kyiv, Odesa, Moscow and what was then Leningrad.

On my way out of Warsaw toward Kiev, I stopped and visited the former death camp, Treblinka. From July of 1942 to October of 1943 almost a million Jews were killed at Treblinka. Of the many Nazi death camps, it was second only to Auschwitz-Birkenau in terms of mass murder. As the Russian army advanced, German soldiers razed Treblinka’s buildings and plowed fields to conceal evidence of the mass murders they’d committed.

That April day was sunny and warm with a gentle breeze. I stood by a memorial, a field of 17,000 jagged stones that symbolized a cemetery. Seven hundred of the stones were inscribed with names of Poland villages, once home to Jews.

I walked the quiet grassy fields, shocked and dazed, having a hard comprehending the evil that had taken place on that land. When I returned to my rental car, I endured additional shock–my car had been broken into. My passport, California driver’s license, camera and traveler’s checks had been stolen. It was hard for me to be too upset, I was standing on ground where too many people had endured much more than being robbed.

After the robbery, rather than driving toward Kiev, I headed in the opposite direction, back to Warsaw. In the morning I went to the U.S. Embassy and applied for a new passport. Then I drove to Vienna, the closest city with a Russian embassy. I filled out paper work for a new visa and I read a newspaper—there was no Internet in 1986. I learned there of an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

If my car hadn’t been broken into and my passport hadn’t been stolen, I would’ve been sleeping a few dozen miles from Chernobyl’s Reactor Number 4 when it suffered a power increase, which triggered explosions in its core. Large quantities of radioactive isotopes were released into the atmosphere and caused an open-air fire that increased the emission of radioactive material. It took thirty-six hours for Soviet officials to alert the people living in the surrounding areas. Tens of thousands of people were exposed to massive quantities of deadly radiation.

I feel sorry for all the people exposed to radiation and know that but for a Polish thief, I would've been one of them.