Thursday, March 28

Holocaust survivor dies in Mariupol


The Ukrainian survivor of the Holocaust Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova He died on April 4 in a basement of Mariupolwhere he was born 91 years ago, in the midst of the siege by Russian troops, according to a story published by the Jewish portal chabad.org.

“My mother did not deserve a death like this”her daughter, Larissa, was quoted as saying by the source after she and her family had been taken to safety in a rescue action that came too late for Obiedkova.

Larissa and her husband risked their lives to bury her, amid the shelling, in a park near the Sea of ​​Azov, added chabad.org.

The survivors of the family were evacuated thanks to the work of the Jewish community, led by Rabbi Mendel Cohen, the only rabbi of Mariupol, who declared that the city “has become a gigantic graveyard”.

“Vanda Semyonovna experienced unimaginable horrors. She was a kind, cheerful woman and a special person who will forever remain in our hearts,” the rabbi added to the Jewish site.

She was born in Mariupol on December 8, 1930. In October 1941, when she was 11 years old, the Nazis entered Mariupol and began the persecution of the city’s Jews.

The SS arrested her mother and Vanda Semyonovna hid in a cellar. Her fear left her practically speechless about her, which, according to her daughter Larissa, was what saved her from her because she couldn’t scream.

Then, when Vanda Semyonova fell into the hands of the Nazis, some family friends managed to convince them that she was Greek, thus saving her.

Vanda Semyonovna lived in a hospital until Mariupol was liberated in 1943.

In 1998 he gave a testimony of his experience as a survivor of the Holocaust to the USC Shoah Foundation, a foundation of the University of Southern California created by American filmmaker Steven Spielberg in 1994.

Her daughter had a recording of her interview in her house but it was burned, as a result of the Russian bombing, like many other things.

He married in 1954, lived his whole life in Mariupol and, according to his daughter, never wanted to leave the city.

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In early March, when the Russian attacks began, the family took refuge in the basement of a neighboring store.

“There was no water, no electricity, no heating and it was unbearably cold. There was nothing we could do for her. We lived like animals,” her daughter said of the conditions in which her mother lived her last days.


www.elperiodico.com

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