91-year-old Holocaust survivor dies in basement during Russian attacks on Mariupol

"Mama didn't deserve such a death," she said.

"There was no water, no electricity, no heat - and it was unbearably cold. There was nothing we could do for her. We were living like animals."

Leaving the shelter was dangerous, with two snipers guarding near the closest water sources, so the two could not leave to get water for days.

"Every time a bomb fell, the entire building shook," Larissa continued.

"My mother kept saying she didn’t remember anything like this during the Great Patriotic War [World War II]."

More than 80 years ago, Vanda was also forced to hide in a basement during Mariupol's Nazi occupation. She was born in 1930 and was 10 years old when Nazi occupiers arrived in the city and rounded up its Jewish population in October 1941. Thousands of people, including Vanda's mother, were executed in a mass grave. Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed Vanda’s death in a statement on Twitter on Wednesday. https://twitter.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1516731535357005826 "At 10 years old, Vanda Obiedkova survived the German occupation of Mariupol," the tweet read. "Vanda was 91 when Russian army invaded her city. 81 years after Nazi regime, she died. Dying in a basement, freezing, pleading for water, Holocaust survivor asked: 'Why is this happening?'" Another Holocaust survivor who had lived through four Nazi concentration camps, 96-year-old Boris Romantschenko, was killed last month when Russian forces shelled his apartment building in Kharkiv. https://twitter.com/Buchenwald_Dora/status/1505963347979739141?s=20&t=ti9kmgF6eshuv9wwX_ny4g News of Vanda's death comes just days after 96-year-old Anastasia Gulej, also a survivor of the Nazi regime, was forced to flee Ukraine and find safety in Germany, bravely stating: "I survived Hitler, I survived Stalin and I will survive this a**hole Putin too."