95-year-old woman who survived Nazis, Chernobyl and COVID dies crossing street in NYC
A 95-year-old woman who survived the Nazis, Chernobyl and COVID was fatally struck by a car while crossing the street outside her Brooklyn home last week.Mayya Gil had been walking across Cropsey Avenue in front of her apartment in Bensonhurst near 24th Avenue around 12:40 p.m.Thursday with her home health aide when a cargo van took a left turn and rammed into them, according to the New York Police Department.The health aide was hospitalized in stable condition, but Gil succumbed to her injuries and died.
The NYPD added that the driver was not arrested or charged.Gil, a native of Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine, had moved to the country’s capital, Kyiv, with her mother and brother when she was 12 years old to escape the invading Nazis, according to a 2020 New York Times article.
She would eventually meet her husband Vilyam in Kyiv and have their twin daughters while living under Soviet rule.Then when the devastating Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in Ukraine in 1986, one of Gil’s daughters picked up and moved to New York City.Six years later, the rest of the family followed and quickly found their roots in Bensonhurst.Larisa, the daughter who spearheaded her family’s immigration to the United States, died at the age of 58 in 2013 after a fight against late-stage pancreatic cancer.
Gil’s family originally couldn’t afford a burial plot, so they were included in the New York Times’ “Neediest Case Fund” to help give Larisa the resting plot she deserved.Gil’s husband Vilyam then passed away in 2020 after contracting COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic.But Gil was a survivor through it all, spurred forward by her dedication to her family and involvement in the Bensonhurst community, including as an active member of the Jewish Community Center in her neighborhood, her daughter Irina Lizunova told Gothamist.“Everybody knows her.
She was a very active lady,” Lizunova told the outlet.Gil’s granddaughter Natasha Famighetti added, “She w...