Dina (Vera) Mironovna Pronicheva (Ukrainian: Діна Миронівна Пронічева, Dina Mironivna Pronicheva; 7 January 1911 – 1977) was a Soviet Jewish actress at the Kiev Puppet Theatre, military communications-trained 37th Army of the Soviet Union veteran, and a survivor of the 29–30 September 1941 Babi Yar massacre of Jews by Nazi German forces in Kyiv[1] who also worked for the German occupation.
Karel C. Berkhoff attributes the contradictions in Dina's testimonies to several factors, "Official censorship, self-censorship, and undue artistic or editorial license produced records that differ in substance and, especially, style.
[2] The Soviet Union historian testimony version includes an account of Pronicheva's vivid hallucinations while at Babi Yar, seeing people who were not there.
According to her written testimony to a 1946 trial of 15 accused Germans, Dina Pronicheva was born in Chernihiv on 7 January 1911[4] and was of Jewish ethnicity.
"[4] Experience Arriving at Babyn Yar On 28 September 1941, an order signed by the commandant's office was then given for Jews to take warm clothes and assemble at Degtiarev Street the following day at 8:00 a.m. or face execution.
We’ll let you go after we’ve shot all the Jews.”[8] According to a second written testimony, she showed her passport to a fat officer at a desk and told him she was Russian, but a policeman ran over and said "Don't believe her, she is a kike.
[2] In her testimony to Soviet historians, Pronicheva said that she had thrown away her identity card before reaching the area and was told not to strip as it was late in the day and the Germans were tired.
"[13] Execution Ordered Pronicheva testifies that a German officer told the group waiting that they would all be shot so there were no witnesses, but they were not undressed.
After walking onto a ledge where people were machine gunned, she jumped off the cliff but felt no pain landing despite blood pouring from her face.
[14] First Escape and Vivid Hallucinations Pronicheva then began to be buried alive with sand and started coughing, but moved the sand away with her good right hand which the German had not stepped on and moved away to a wall to hide behind the execution wall with a fourteen year old child she met named Motia, where at dawn she witnessed Germans raping and murdering Jewish women and killing a child and an old woman.
Pronicheva testifies that she was later betrayed, but policeman and Gestapo who came for her were told that she had a heart condition and was possibly not a Jew as her papers were in order.
Fourth Escape and Theatrical Work Pronicheva testified at the trial that at Lukianivka prison a policeman named Mitia freed her, revealed himself to be a partisan and left her near the Kalinin hospital.
When the police then called for the “soul destroyer” — a van equipped with a gas chamber — a friendly neighbour bribed a policeman to let Vlodya go.
[11] Based on one of the at least 12 versions[20] of her testimony and other evidence at a trial supervised by the NKVD, 12 of the 15 accused German prisoners of war were executed, including Paul Scheer.
[20][21] She later related her horrifying story to writer Anatoly Kuznetsov, who incorporated it into his novel Babi Yar, published in censored form in Yunost in 1966.
In 1967, during their preparations for a trial of former members of Sonderkommando 4a, officials in the West German city of Darmstadt apparently asked the Prosecutor’s Office in Kiev to question Pronicheva.