Explosive love: the 1950 terrorist attack at a school near Tiraspol, which was kept silent for half a century
Today, school shootings and bombings are alarmingly common. There were terrible emergencies in educational institutions, but such cases were always carefully hushed up. The very first such act of insane, unjustifiable violence was an explosion in the Moldovan seven-year school in the village of Giski, near Tiraspol, which occurred in 1950. The world learned about the tragedy only half a century later, in 2000 - the authorities managed to successfully hide the terrorist attack, despite the fact that 24 people, mostly children, were killed in it.
One day, in the late 40s, a new military instructor appeared at the school in the village of Giski. This is not surprising - in the post-war period, many former military men looked for themselves in peaceful life and often took up work with children. The students and teaching staff did not like the new employee too much - he never said hello, was noisy and impudent.
The military leader was a lonely man, so he rented a small room from one of the local old women. The man only came home to spend the night, as he spent almost all his time at school. It was there that he was overtaken by tender feelings for his Russian and French teacher Natalya Donich.
A young woman with her preschool son moved to Giski after the death of her husband, a military pilot. Natalya Dmitrievna was young, pretty and loved children very much. The teacher also loved her subjects and taught them with inspiration and therefore very interesting. In her spare time, Donich wrote poetry and even led a group of young poets at school.
It is difficult to say how it happened that a young, intelligent teacher responded to the advances of a military commander who was completely unlike her. They started dating and everyone around them reacted to this with understanding - a young widow has the right to quiet female happiness and her choice does not concern anyone.
Soon the village started talking about the upcoming wedding - the man proposed to Natalya, and she agreed. But when the date of the upcoming celebration was in full swing in Giski, Natalya Donich unexpectedly broke up with her chosen one. It turns out that the military commander admitted to his beloved that in distant Kazan he has a wife, Anna, and a son, Tolik.
In the post-war years, such a turn of events was perceived as nothing other than a vile betrayal and baseness deserving of universal condemnation. The would-be bride told the man what she thought about him, and this greatly offended him. But even more terrible was the general condemnation that surrounded the scoundrel with the residents of Gisok, who were sincerely worried about the young teacher.
Now, 70 years later, it is difficult to do a psychological analysis and talk about what was the impetus for the terrible crime. Let's just say that the military commander did not forgive the contempt of his beloved woman and decided to deal with her and at the same time commit suicide. To do this, in the local branch of DOSAAF, where he was a member due to his occupation, the man stole 12 kg of TNT.
To prevent the accusation of theft from falling on those responsible for the explosives, he left a confession note in the warehouse. The military commander sent another farewell letter to his official wife in Kazan:
The former military man easily assembled a bomb from TNT, which he planned to detonate during his birthday celebration. He invited Donich to the holiday, but the teacher ignored his note. By this, without knowing it, she saved the lives of the guests, the owner of the home and her neighbors.
The offended lover had to urgently change the plan. A monstrous idea came to his mind to detonate a bomb at school, right during lessons. A day after his birthday, April 4, 1950, a man with a bomb in a large package came to a village school.
A school cleaning lady noticed the military instructor’s strange burden and asked what was in the weighty package. The terrorist answered dryly: “A gift for Natasha” and, without stopping, walked along the school corridor to Donich’s class.
Student Melania Onufrieva, one of the few who were lucky enough to survive that day, later recalled that Natalya Dmitrievna taught a Russian language lesson. It was a sunny spring day and the young teacher sat down on the windowsill near the open window.
Suddenly the door swung open and a military commander with a distorted face appeared on the threshold. He shouted “Run from here” and rushed to Natalya. The woman managed to jump from the windowsill and scream “Mommy” before the man pulled her into his arms. Immediately after this, a monstrous explosion thundered, from which the village school building jumped up and collapsed like a house of cards.
The explosion was so strong that 5th grade student Kondrat Kulik was thrown out the window and flew 50 meters. He flew over two fences and a row of trees and fell near the entrance to a local church. Fortunately, he escaped with only concussion and bruises. Later, another student was found in the church yard - the seriously wounded Boris Kalinin.
A few minutes later, the entire village was in the ruins of the school building. People screamed, cried and ran along the roof of the building, which covered the rubble of the walls, the dead and the survivors. Their actions only worsened the situation of the victims, but no one thought about it in a panic.
When the first wave of horror subsided, people organized a clearing of the rubble and began to remove the dead and living from the rubble. The bodies were piled at the school gates, and the victims were loaded into cars and taken to Tiraspol and Bendery to hospitals and military hospitals.
At the same time, the scale of the tragedy became apparent - the entire first shift of the school was affected, and especially Donich’s 5th grade, where she taught a lesson. Ilya Sukhovich, years later, said that when he woke up, he did not see the school walls around him. Nearby lay parts of the body of Natalya Donich and his classmates, covered in blood and brick chips.
The Minister of Internal Affairs of Moldova, who was in one of the military units near Tiraspol on a working visit, arrived at the scene of the explosion. The official took an active part in clearing the rubble, shoulder to shoulder with the local priest, and supervised the loading of the wounded into vehicles.
The terrible tragedy affected almost everyone in the village of Giski. The Fedorenko family lost three children at once. Fourth grade students Anna and Claudia died on the spot, and fifth grader Ivan was seriously wounded and died a year later in a Tiraspol hospital. Parents went crazy with grief and died from heart attacks, and the surviving children, in addition to physical injuries, received severe mental shock, which haunted many throughout their lives.
Even now, after so many years, the students of the Giski village school cannot talk about that day without tears. But then only a few learned about the grief of these people. Moscow decided that the situation in Moldova was already tense and prohibited the publication of information about the terrorist attack at the Giski school. The Kremlin was afraid that enemies in the West could use the news of the explosion for their own purposes, but no one was particularly worried about the injured people.
Neither the newspapers nor the radio said a word about the explosion. The destroyed school was promptly dismantled, and a new one was built a little to the side. In 1950, the school had its bitterest graduation yet - only five surviving 7th grade students.
The tragedy in Giski became known to everyone only in 2000. The village residents painstakingly collected information about the dead and survivors bit by bit, and then erected a modest monument on the site where the school once stood. The names of 21 children and two adults are carved on the gray stone: teacher Natalya Donich and head teacher Nikolai Danilov. The name of the military commander is not on the monument - the name of the freak who killed children and teachers in peacetime has been consigned to oblivion for centuries.