The Greatest Survival Stories of All Time by Cara Tabachnick

Author:Cara Tabachnick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ulysses Press
Published: 2019-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

Dina Mironovna Pronicheva

Ravine of Death

Kiev, Ukraine, 1941

There was a noise, a slight banging of something hard onto the ground, then a low murmur in German. The hot breath of the soldier’s words came so close to Dina that it felt like they were being whispered directly into her ear. She tried not to whimper, biting her tongue so hard she could feel the bitter taste of blood in her mouth. The liquid trickled down her throat.

“Demydenko, come here, fill it in,” the soldier commanded. Sounds of metal scraping and a soft rustle pervaded the chilly nighttime air as the soldiers started to shovel mounds of sand into the open mass graves. Dina was lying face-up, sandwiched between piles of corpses, the beaten, bloodied bodies she’d heard die. Small, hard grains of sand clogged her ears, her nostrils, and her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. There was not enough air. Her throat constricted. She could feel herself start to suffocate.

“No, Dina Pronicheva, you are not going to die here,” she told herself, “not after what you have made it through today.” She’d rather die at the hands of German soldiers than be buried alive, she decided, flailing against the shifting grains of sand. Slowly, she unstuck her good right hand from underneath her damaged side. Her left arm was bloodied and crushed, its sharp white bones sticking through her shirt after the soldier had stomped on her body earlier. She tried not to look at her arm or remember the deadening weight of the black boots upon her back, so heavy she’d felt and heard the clink of steel wedged inside his heel.

If Dina saw what had actually happened to her, she knew she wouldn’t be able to move forward. Gathering her strength, she lifted her good arm and wiped the fine sand coating the corners of her dry mouth. Air rushed into her lungs, and she started to cough. Loudly. She stopped herself, breathing the debris back into her lungs. She couldn’t let the soldiers hear a single sound. They would shoot her on sight. And she wanted to live.

Massacre in Kiev

At 7 o’clock that morning, Dina had left her house to head to her mother’s, leaving the sweet forms of her toddler children still cuddled under their feather blankets. She left her husband, Viktor, and mother-in-law to mind the children. It was safer that way. After all, they were Russian Jews. Even though, through marriage, she had a resident card stating she was Ukrainian, she knew her curly brown hair and flashing dark eyes were a dead giveaway.

It had been less than twenty-four hours since the order appeared pasted throughout the streets of Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. They read: “All Jews are to take warm and valuable things and appear at eight in the morning on September 29 at Degtyarev Street. The punishment for failing to appear is execution.” The signature was from the commandant’s office.

Rumors had fervently spread that soldiers were going to purge the city of Jews. They didn’t know where they were going to be sent.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.