Dina Pronicheva’s Testimony at a War Crimes Trial: A Model of Effective Persuasion, a Reminder That We Must Never Forget History’s Lessons

Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial

Today, September 29, 2021, is the 80th anniversary of the Nazi massacre at Babi Yar. On September 29-30, 1941, SS troops, assisted by Wehrmacht soldiers, Ukrainian soldiers, and Ukrainian police, murdered more than 33,000 Ukrainian Jews – men, women, and even small children. Babi Yar is a ravine outside Kiev. The victims were marched to the ravine and shot. The killings went on for two terrible days.

Dina Pronicheva, a local actress, survived the massacre and testified about her experiences. She presented her statement in a calm, matter-of-fact style. Her story taught us a lesson about inhuman brutality that we must never forget.

Pronicheva narrated how she was separated from her family on September 29, never to see her mother (who died that day) again. She described the sounds of screams and gunfire. She explained how she played dead while murdered and dying victims were piled on top of her, until it got dark and she was able to sneak away. Here is a brief selection from her testimony:

“Suddenly all became quiet. It was getting dark. Germans armed with submachine-guns walked around, finishing off the wounded. I felt that somebody was standing above me, but I did not give any sign that I was alive, even though that was very difficult. Then I felt we were being covered with earth. I closed my eyes so that the soil would not get into them, and when it became dark and silent, literally the silence of death, I opened my eyes and threw the sand off me, making sure that no one was close by, no one was around, no one was watching me. I saw the pit with thousands of dead bodies. I was overcome by terror. In some places the earth was heaving - people half-alive were [still] breathing.”

Her calm recitation of facts was enough. The Nazis’ crimes were so horrible, so unthinkably brutal, that there was no need for her to supplement her description with the blood-curdling words that demagogues so love to utter. She let her horrible experience speak for itself.

What was the legal aftermath? Paul Blobel, one of the massacre’s main organizers, was arrested after the war, convicted of murder, and executed. Most of the lower-level participants, such as common soldiers, middle-ranking commanders, and police officers, never faced justice. Those who survived the war returned quietly to their peacetime lives.

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Further Reading: Richard Spencer’s “End of History” Speech: Are Trump’s Supporters Fooling Themselves?
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A Holocaust slogan tells us: “never forget.” My uncle, Pfc. Peter Feduska, son of immigrants, gave his life fighting Nazis in World War II. My father-in-law, Rev. Jesse Clanton, was a disabled veteran of the same fight. My father came back from World War II in North Africa and Southern France uninjured, but shaken by what he had seen. Millions of Americans can tell similar stories. Conservatives love to call the men and women of World War II “the greatest generation.” 

Yet, in the United States today, we are getting closer to Nazi Germany than we would like to think. People who wave Nazi symbols and wear T-shirts that say “6MWE6” (“6 Million Wasn’t Enough”) describe themselves as American patriots. On occasions that are rare, but even so too frequent, such people even find a home in today’s Republican Party. Indeed, although former President Donald Trump condemned neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, he also said that some of those who marched with them were “fine people.”  That's a pretty close distinction. Before the 2020 election, Trump told the Proud Boys, a white supremacist group, to “stand back and stand by.” 

Yes, it could happen here. It could happen here if good people fail to stop it. Adolf Hitler characterized himself as a Christian fighter, a defender of the faithful. Germany in 1941 was one the world's richest countries, the homeland of Bach, Beethoven, Schiller, and Martin Luther. If it could happen there, it could happen here. The only way to honor the greatest generation is to make sure that their sacrifices were not in vain. 

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For Further Reading: Adolf Hitler’s “Christian Nationalist” Speech

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I bring up Dina Pronicheva’s testimony because we must, in fact, never forget. The human capacity for cruelty is boundless. Nevertheless, there is also no limit to the human capacity for doing what is right. Pronicheva’s calm, detailed recitation of the facts of her own experience remind us what can happen and what we must never allow to happen again. Pronicheva’s testimony reminds us of the horrors that people commit in the name of racism, religious bigotry, and bureaucratic inertia. Still, all the time, the people who commit monstrous deeds describe themselves as moral and noble, as good Christians, as self-sacrificing patriots, as paragons of virtue. The world must never forget Dina Pronicheva’s testimony. She laid out the facts. The world listened to her at the time. But have we moved on and forgotten? Or do we wrongly think that her dark warning has become ancient history? 

P.S. The "documentary novel" Babi Yar was one of the formative experiences of my youth. Everyone should read it. Everyone. 

Image: דוד שי, via Wikimedia Commons