A Ukrainian survivor of the Nazi Holocaust died at the age of 91 while sheltering from Russian attacks during the siege of Mariupol.
Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova died on April 4 trying to escape Russian troops hiding in a frozen cellar without water, in a gloomy echo of how she had hidden in a basement of the Nazis when she was 10 years old, her daughter Larissa told the NGO Chabad.org.
Obiedkova, is the second Holocaust survivor known to have died during Russia's war in Ukraine. According to her daughter, who was with her at the time, her mother “did not deserve such a death”, especially after having survived the horrors of World War II.
Larissa described the conditions in Mariupol as “living like animals”.
“There was no water, no electricity, no heating, and it was unbearably cold,” he said. His mother was sick and motionless. “Every time a bomb fell, the whole building shook,” Larissa said. “My mother kept saying that she didn't remember anything like this during the Great Patriotic War (World War II).”
When German forces occupied the city in October 1941, Obiedkova avoided his capture by hiding in a basement. The Nazis rounded up the Jewish population of the city, including his mother, who was captured and shot, along with his mother's entire family. Nazi forces killed between 9,000 and 16,000 Jews in ditches on the outskirts of Mariupol.
Obiedkova's father, who was not Jewish, managed to get his daughter admitted to a hospital, where he spent two years after the Nazis were convinced that she was Greek and not Jewish. Mariupol was liberated by the Soviet army in September 1943.
Her daughter said that a VHS tape of Obiedkova giving an interview in 1998 about her life was destroyed when her house was attacked. Larissa and her husband buried their mother in a public park near the Sea of Azov.
Rabbi Mendel Cohen, from Mariupol, described Obiedkova as “a kind and cheerful woman, a special person who will forever remain in our hearts” and who “lived through unimaginable horrors”.
Boris Romantschenko, another survivor of the Ukrainian Holocaust, was killed during the current war in March. The 96-year-old had survived several Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, and was killed by an explosion during Russia's assault on the city of Kharkiv.
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