Dina Levina

Dina Avramivna Ruvinska (who later took her mother’s last name and began to call herself Dina Arkadiivna Levina) was born on November 4, 1927 in Kyiv.

Dina’s mother, Klara Borysivna Levina, worked at the Kyiv District Power Plant, then at the Kharchovyk Club (Palace of Culture of the Baking Industry). Dina’s father, Avram Ruvinskyi, worked at the Kyiv Prosthetic Plant. During the war, he joined the air defence.

The family lived at 43/45 Shchekavytska Street, apartment 22. According to Dina’s memories, the Podil community was very friendly. There was a stage in the yard where performances often took place, and the residents of the house cooked together in the yard on kerosene stoves.

Dina studied at school No. 157. Before the war she graduated from 6th grade. At school, she received diet food and clothes as an excellent student and a child from a low-income family. She took part in school amateur performances. When Dina was 7 years old, she started training at the ballet studio of Oleksandra Havrylova, taking part in a staging of the Swan Lake by the age of 14.

On June 22, 1941, after the German attack on the USSR, the bombing of Kyiv began and bomb shelters were built. Dina’s family could not evacuate. On September 19, 1941, German troops occupied Kyiv.

On her way to Babyn Yar on September 29, 1941, Dina took her family photographs with her, because she valued them so much. Those photos did not survive.

Dina and her mother jumped into the ravine before the shots were fired, and that is how she managed to survive. Together with a few other women, she started to crawl out of the Yar in the morning, then asked people how to get to Podil and returned to her home neighbourhood. She was well received by the neighbours.

For several days Dina was staying with Kateryna Shchur. The neighbours offered Dina food and clothes, but asked her to leave because of the danger. Later, Dina met Valentyna Tarasenko, the mother of a school friend, who hid her in her apartment. Then, she went to an orphanage in Pushcha, where she registered under the name Pylypenko (Pylypchenko), but the orphanage was later dismissed. After that, Dina wandered the villages near Kyiv and offered her help at the household.

In 1942, the Nazis began to call on young people to go to Germany to work. They also organised round-ups, taking people to Germany. Dina was among such people. She managed to escape the train at the Polish-German border. In Poland, she was working on local farms for some time.

In 1944, in Poland, Dina noticed an advertisement for a repatriation centre and went there with a certificate from the orphanage, saying her surname was Pylypchenko. When filling out  the paperwork, she gave her real surname – Ruvinska. Dina spent several months in a camp for displaced persons.

When she returned to Ukraine, her apartment in Kyiv was occupied. Dina went to the district executive committee to get her room back, but the plea was turned down.

In 1945, Dina returned to Myronivka (Kyiv oblast), the village where she had been hiding after surviving Babyn Yar. There, she applied to the district Komsomol committee. According to Dina’s memories, Komsomol was unwilling to accept people who had been repatriated . Dina got a job as an assistant teacher in children’s centre. She received food from the district health department. Her health was deteriorating.

In 1948, Dina moved to Ivano-Frankivsk, where she met Yurii Margolis. They started living together and moved to Lviv. In 1953, their son Matvii was born.

Eventually, due to health problems, Dina and her family moved to Kyiv for a better climate.

Dina Levina managed to find Dina Pronicheva, another woman who survived the Babyn Yar tragedy.

In 2011, Dina Levina passed away in Tbilisi.