Holocaust survivor survived Ukraine by hiding herself in basement

She survived the German invasion of Ukraine eight decades ago by hiding herself in a basement. She went underground again when the Russians invaded in March to escape the terror.

But this time, 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova did not emerge from her hiding place in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

Obiedkova reportedly asked as Russian artillery pounded her city and the outgunned Ukrainians fought pitched battles in the streets with Vladimir Putin's forces.

Not long after that, Obiedkova died on April 4, her rabbi, Mendel Cohen, told NBC News.

Mama didn't deserve such a death, her daughter, Larissa, told Chabad.org, the Judaism website that first reported on Obiedkova's death. There was no water, no electricity, no heat, and it was unbearably cold. Before she escaped Mariupol, Obiedkova's daughter and her husband buried her in a public park less than a mile from the sea of Azov, with the help of her neighbors.

Cohen, who heads Chabad-Lubavitch in Mariupol and was the only rabbi in the city, said Vanda Semyonovna was a sweet person.

Her story emerged as the last of the Ukrainian forces prepared to make their final stand against the Russians.

This is our appeal to the world. It may be our last. Maj. Serhiy Volyna posted a video shared with NBC News and other media outlets and posted to what appeared to be his own Facebook page on Wednesday, saying he may have only a few days or hours left. The enemy units are dozens of times larger than ours, they have dominance in the air, in artillery, in ground troops, in equipment and in tanks. Obiedkova was born in Mariupol on December 8, 1930, according to records on file with the USC Shoah Foundation, a nonprofit organization that interviews survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides. She was 10 when the Germans swarmed into Mariupol in October 1941 and began rounding up Jews for execution.

Obiedkova told interviewers from the foundation in 1998 that the Gestapo killed her mother and several other Jewish relatives. She was able to escape arrest by hiding herself in a basement from the Germans.

Obiedkova was moved to a series of hiding places outside Mariupol when it was safer to come out. When questioned by the Germans, family friends insisted she was Greek, not Jewish.

Obiedkova's father, who was not Jewish, finally checked her into a hospital to pass her off as a patient, and that s where she stayed until the city was liberated in 1943.

When the Russians began snub Mariupol in March, Obiedkova and her family found a hiding place in the basement of a nearby store that had no heat or water or electricity.

Every time a bomb fell, the entire building shook, Larissa told Chabad News. My mother kept saying she didn't remember anything like this during the Great Patriotic War World War II. Obiedkova was an active member of Mariupol's last remaining synagogue, said Cohen, who said he was in Israel undergoing hip surgery when the war broke out.

Cohen wrote a text message to NBC News, of the 1,800 or so Jewish families in Mariupol, "We know for sure that 500 or more are still alive." They are on the rest to know if they left, they are alive, or they need more help.