Dina Pronicheva

Dina Mstyslavska (Pronicheva) was born in Chernihiv in 1911 into the family of  Myron and Anna Mstyslavskyi.

In her youth, Dina moved to Kyiv and began working at the Kyiv Puppet Theatre, where she met her future husband, Viktor Pronichev, who came from an ancient acting dynasty. In 1932, they got married. In 1938, the couple had a daughter, Lidiia, and in 1940 – a son, Volodymyr.

Dina lived with her husband and children at 41 Vorovskoho Street (presently Bulvarno-Kudriavska Street). Dina’s parents, brothers and sister lived nearby at 27 Turgenevska Street (presently Oleksandr Konyskoho Street). When the war broke out, the brothers went to the front.

On September 29, 1941, on the German orders, Dina went to Babyn Yar with her parents and sister. There, she managed to convince the Germans that she was Ukrainian and joined a group of people who had accidentally ended up there. However, in the evening of September 29, an order was issued to shoot these people as unwanted witnesses.

Even before they started shooting at her, Dina fell from a cliff onto the bodies of the dead and pretended to be killed. For three days she was trying to get out of Babyn Yar. Eventually, she managed to hide in a barn, but the owner discovered her and informed the Germans. Dina Pronicheva was taken to Babyn Yar for the second time.

This time, she and other prisoners were put on a truck, and in the area of Shuliavka, Dina Pronicheva and her friend, Liubov Shamin, managed to escape. For some time they were hiding with the wife of Dina’s cousin, and later moved to Darnytsia, to the abandoned buildings of the DVRZ (Darnytsia Railcar Repair Plant). 

When the Germans decided to reopen the plant, Dina was mistaken for a pre-war worker. She had fake documents in the name of Nadiia Savchenko and took up the offer to work at the plant. Dina worked as a receptionist and then as a translator. During the half a year she worked at the plant, she helped two Russian prisoners of war, who were medical practitioners and worked at the plant; Dina changed their Russian last names to Ukrainian ones.

One of Dina’s brothers returned to Kyiv after Red Army units had been encircled near the city. But the local janitors betrayed him to the Germans as a Soviet soldier. Dina’s brother was shot on the doorstep of his own house.

Dina’s daughter Lidiia lived in an orphanage, and Dina took her son Volodymyr back to live with her in December 1941. It was dangerous because she was forced to hide as a witness to the Babyn Yar massacre. During one of the raids, German soldiers used little Volodymyr as bait – they started shooting at the two-year-old in the street, shouting “Come out, or we’ll kill him!”. Dina watched the abuse from the window of her friend Mariia Kalinichenko’s apartment and was ready to go out to save her son, but her friend held her back. She said, “If you go out, the Nazis will kill you both”.

After an unsuccessful attempt to lure the mother out, the Gestapo ordered the police to put the child into a death van.  Mariia Kalinichenko rescued the boy bribing the executioners with her golden wedding ring. Mariia Kalinichenko was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

The rescued boy was given to his father, but that winter Dina’s husband was arrested and then shot for refusing to give up the location of his Jewish wife. After her husband’s arrest, Dina took her son back again.

Later, one of the factory workers reported Dina to the management. And Dina had to go into hiding again and leave her child behind. Nataliia Movchanova, an underground activist who worked and lived with Dina, managed to take the boy to an orphanage on Ovrutska Street, where his sister Lidiia lived at the time.

On February 23, 1942, Dina was arrested by the Gestapo. She spent almost a month in prison but managed to escape. The medical practitioners she had saved earlier helped her and forged the health certificate – this is how she made it through security posts and out of the city. By Bila Tserkva Dina joined a travelling theatre headed by Hryhorii Afanasiev. He was willing to help as he himself witnessed how Germans killed his wife and small son.

Dina Pronicheva often fled the city because of the threat of exposure. She returned to Kyiv for good only after the city was liberated. In 1944, she retrieved both of her children from the orphanages.

After the war ended, in January 1946, Dina Pronicheva testified at the Kyiv trial, where several German officers were convicted.

In the postwar years, Dina worked as an actress in the Puppet Theatre. She married her rescuer and colleague Hryhorii Afanasiev. Dina lived in the same house as before the war.

She took part in the 1968 Darmstadt trial of the former members of Sonderkommando 4a who had escaped conviction at the Nuremberg trials. To do this, she travelled to Darmstadt (accompanied by two KGB officers) to testify in person. As a result, the criminal who ordered the shooting of Jews on September 29 was exposed and convicted.

After the war, she was friends with all the survivors of Babyn Yar and kept in touch with former prisoners of the Syrets concentration camp. She took part in unofficial meetings in 1966.

Dina Pronicheva died in 1977 due to kidney cancer.