Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova died sheltering in freezing basement during Mariupol siege
A Holocaust survivor of 91 years has died in a basement under siege in Mariupol, Ukraine.
Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova’s death was announced at the Auschwitz Memorial.
Chabad.org, a Jewish organization, reported that her daughter had shared the news with her family after she arrived at a safe place. She said that she died April 4th “pleading for water” from a freezing basement.
Larissa, her daughter, told the organization that her mother wanted to know “Why is it happening?”
Obiedkova, then 10, was 10 when Mariupol was captured by the Nazis. The Nazis killed her mother and thousands of other Jews that day. She lived in a basement and then died in the basement of the same city 81-years later.
Larissa described the conditions in Mariupol as “living like animals.”
“There was no water, no electricity, no heat – and it was unbearably cold,” she said, adding that Russian snipers set up positions near the closest water sources, making trips to them extremely dangerous.
“Every time a bomb fell, the entire building shook,” Larissa said. “My mother kept saying she didn’t remember anything like this during the [WWII].”
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