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.
According to the New York Police Department, Mayya Gil and her home health aide were walking across Cropsey Avenue in front of her Bensonhurst apartment near 24th Avenue around 12:40 p.m. Thursday when a cargo van made a left turn and collided with them.
The health aide was hospitalized in stable condition, but Gil died as a result of her injuries. The NYPD also stated that the driver was not arrested or charged.
Gil, a native of Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine, fled to the country’s capital, Kyiv, with her mother and brother when she was 12 years old to avoid the invading Nazis, according to a 2020 New York Times article. She met her husband Vilyam in Kyiv and had twin daughters while living under Soviet rule.
Then, when the devastating Chernobyl nuclear disaster struck Ukraine in 1986, one of Gil’s daughters packed up and moved to New York City. Six years later, the rest of the family followed, quickly establishing roots in Bensonhurst.
Larisa, the daughter who spearheaded her family’s immigration to the United States, passed away in 2013 at the age of 58 from late-stage pancreatic cancer.
Gil’s family couldn’t initially afford a burial plot, so they were added to the New York Times’ “Neediest Case Fund” to help give Larisa the resting place she deserved.
Gil’s husband, Vilyam, died in 2020 after contracting COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic.
Gil, however, was a survivor through it all, fueled by her devotion to her family and involvement in the Bensonhurst community, including as an active member of her neighborhood’s Jewish Community Center, according to her daughter Irina Lizunova.
“Everyone knows her. She was a very active lady,” Lizunova told the publication.
Gil’s granddaughter, Natasha Famighetti, said, “She was the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever met.
“Nothing gave her more joy than just being around her family,”
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