A BRAVE Holocaust survivor has died while hiding from Russian shelling in the besieged city of Mariupol.
After surviving the horror of the Nazis, Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova, 91, died after spending weeks in an icy cellar without water or heating.
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She was forced to move to the shelter with her family when Russian troops began bombing the city in early March.
And Vanda, left bedridden, had to spend her last weeks in the cold with limited supplies.
Her grieving daughter Larissa said her mother spent her last days comparing the invasion to the Nazi occupation of the city in 1941.
She told Chabad.org: “Mommy didn’t deserve such a death. There was no water, no electricity, no heating – and it was unbearably cold.
“Every time a bomb fell, the whole building shook. My mom kept saying she didn’t remember anything like that during the Great Patriotic War [World War II]†
Larissa and her husband were able to bury her mother after her death on April 4 in a local park, amid non-stop shelling.
Vanda was only 10 years old when the Germans invaded Mariupol, but was able to evade SS troops by hiding in a cellar.
However, her mother was taken.
Vanda survived when her father was able to have her checked in a hospital until the end of the war.
She later married in the city after the war, where she stayed all her life.
‘Mama loved Mariupol; she never wanted to leave,’ Larissa said.
Chabad-Lubawitch Rabbi Mendel Cohen said she was an active member of the Jewish community and added: “All of Mariupol has turned into a cemetery.
“Vanda Semyonovna has experienced unimaginable horrors.
“She was a kind, cheerful woman, a special person who will remain in our hearts forever.”
The port city of Mariupol, home to more than 450,000 people, has been under constant attack from Russian forces since early March, with satellite images showing the destruction of 95 percent of residential areas.
Russia has given Ukrainian troops at the Azovstal steel plant an ultimatum to demand full surrender.
But the heroic Ukrainian forces are not expected to surrender as their leader, Captain Sviatoslav Palamar, of the Azov National Guard regiment, vows to bayonets Putin’s army when their ammunition runs out.
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