Yevgenia Besfamilny, a Holocaust survivor born in Kyiv, Ukraine, was found frozen to death in her apartment in the city in mid-January, during a period of extreme cold and prolonged power and water outages. The circumstances of her death were revealed only after a burst pipe caused flooding in the building where she lived, Ukrainian outlet Novaya Gazeta reported.
Besfamilny, known to her neighbors as “Baba Zhenya,” survived the Holocaust in Ukraine as a child. After the war she was sent to an orphanage, where she was given her unusual last name, “Besfamilny,” which means “without family.” She lived alone, with no known relatives, and spoke only Yiddish and Russian.
Neighbors said she was withdrawn and reserved, rarely opening her door, but regularly attended a nearby synagogue. On January 13, after residents noticed she had not been seen for some time and was not answering phone calls, they began to worry about her.
That night, a water pipe burst on the fourth floor of the building, in Baba Zhenya’s apartment, and water began to flood the structure and freeze in temperatures of minus 18 degrees Celsius. Only after sustained pressure from residents did police agree to break into the apartment. Inside, they found the woman dead, her body completely frozen and the apartment covered in ice. Police estimated she had died several days earlier.
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Residents take shelter from the cold in a Kyiv metro station
(Photo: Serhii Okunev / AFP)
A neighbor, Yulia Khrymychek, said residents of the building regularly brought Baba Zhenya food and tried to look after her as best they could. “No one asked when the water or electricity would come back, everyone just felt sorry for her,” she said. “We are a community that sticks together, even when things are hard.”
According to neighbors, the case illustrates the harsh reality of life in Kyiv this winter, as residents cope with extreme cold, collapsing infrastructure and ongoing damage to electricity and water systems. Thus, Baba Zhenya, who survived the Holocaust, met her death alone in the freezing cold of the Ukrainian winter.