106-year-old survivor of czarist pogroms, Nazis dies in New York

"Bubbe" Maryasha Garelik, who lived through the entire 20th century, surviving the pogroms of czarist Russia, Soviet anti-Semitism and Nazi terror and then dispensing her wisdom to thousands of Lubavitch Jews, has died. She was 106.

She died Wednesday night in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood and was buried Thursday at the Old Montefiore Cemetery near the grave of the ultra Orthodox sect's revered "rebbe," Rabbi Menachem Schneerson.

"She was small in size - less than 5 feet tall - but a giant in stature,"
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky said.
For decades, the bubbe (grandmother in Yiddish) dispensed wisdom to thousands in her Brooklyn neighborhood who came seeking her guidance. Her advice came from decades of trial by fire.

According to a Lubavitch biography of Bubbe Maryasha, her father was killed in a pogrom, or organized massacre, in Czarist Russia when she was 5, and her grandparents, with whom she and her mother lived, were subsequently executed.


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Edited to add:

Maryasha Garelik
1900/1-2007

By Henya Laine


Photo: Saul Lieberman/Wellsprings Magazine
Bubbe Maryasha had three older brothers. We are not sure when Maryasha was born, accounts conflict from the years 1900 or 1901. The children, mother and father lived in Russia where their father, Benzion, worked for a logging company. His job was to make sure the logs were packed on canoes and sent to different parts of Russia.

Bubbe Maryasha was five years old when her father passed away. She, her brothers and her mother went to live with her mother's parents. They lived on a small farm, milked the cows, fed the chickens and helped out with the tiny store they owned.

Once a Cossack entered the store and began clearing off the shelves into his bag. Little Maryasha was standing and watching as the food and goods disappeared with, obviously, no intention of payment. She spoke up with great courage. "Please, either pay for everything or leave it alone. Otherwise we will all starve!" she cried out.

Her grandfather was petrified. Who would dare stand up to an armed, violent Cossack, an open and unpunished anti-Semite? But it worked – the Cossack took a long look at the brave little girl and walked right out of the store.

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sounds like she was an amazing person. Her children can be very proud of her.

grandchildren, great grandchildren, maybe even great great grandchildren

"many" great-great grandchildren!

of an amazing woman. a life filled with all manner of adversity and struggle but she lived honorably and did so much for others, overcame every obstacle, inspired others, was independent, strong, and a truly remarkable woman indeed.

visiting her father after he was arrested. Political prisoners were segregated from criminals. When they came to arrest him, he thought they were just asking him over to the police station for a game of cards. After he was gone, the police began to search the house. They were pulling things out of the closets and my grandmother's stepmother begged them to let her do it neatly, so they did. And when she went to take things out of the top of the closet, she found a gun. She freaked, put the gun under her clothes and grabbed her three year old youngest son and began nursing him so they wouldn't see.

Part of my husband's family escaped the pograms. His infant grandfather was listed as his 14 year old sister's son to get them on the ship to America.

They had marvelously successful lives and he went on to found Color by DeLuxe.