Holocaust survivor, 91, died in ‘unbearably cold’ basement as Russia shelled Mariupol
Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova was left bedridden in the weeks leading to her death earlier this month, her family said
Michael Daventry is Jewish News’s foreign and broadcast editor
An elderly Ukrainian Holocaust survivor has died in the city of Mariupol after spending weeks in a basement without heating or running water as she sheltered from Russian bombardment.
Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova, 91, was left bedridden and unable to move from the small space beneath a heating supplies shop where she took cover with her family.
Her daughter Larissa said she spent her final days comparing their ordeal to the Nazi occupation of the city in 1941.
“Mama didn’t deserve such a death,” she told Chabad.org. “There was no water, no electricity, no heat—and it was unbearably cold.
“Every time a bomb fell, the entire building shook. My mother kept saying she didn’t remember anything like this during the [Second World War].”
She died on April 4.
Larissa buried her mother in a local park before escaping with her family, Chabad said.
Obiedkova, who was 10 when Nazi Germany occupied Mariupol, escaped when the SS came to the family home by hiding in a basement, but her mother was taken away.
She married in the city after the war and was an active member of the Jewish community, according to Chabad-Lubawitch rabbi Mendel Cohen, who runs the only synagogue in the city.
“The whole Mariupol has turned into a cemetery,” he told the organisation’s website.
“Vanda Semyonovna lived through unimaginable horrors. She was a kind, joyous woman, a special person who will forever remain in our hearts.”
Obiedkova recounted her experiences of the Holocaust in a video testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation in the 1990s.
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