Woman who survived Nazis, Chernobyl, COVID killed while crossing Brooklyn street, police say

A 95-year-old woman who survived the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, the Chernobyl disaster and the COVID-19 pandemic was killed by a driver as she crossed the street outside her Brooklyn home on Thursday.

Mayya Gil was walking with her home health aide across Cropsey Avenue in front of her Bensonhurst apartment building near 24th Avenue around 12:40 p.m. when a man driving a cargo van struck both of them while making a left turn, according to the NYPD and Gil’s family members. The health aide, 54, was hospitalized in stable condition, but Gil succumbed to her injuries, police said. The NYPD said police did not arrest or charge the driver.

Gil’s family on Sunday remembered her as a towering figure in Bensonhurst’s Jewish community and said she still had many years left in her.

“Everybody knows her,” said Gil’s daughter Irina Lizunova. “She was a very active lady.”

Gil moved to Kyiv with her mother and brother when she was 12 after their hometown of Khmelnytskyi was invaded by the Nazis, according to a 2020 article written about her in the New York Times. She met her husband Vilyam in the Ukrainian capital and the couple started a family, having twin daughters while the country was under Soviet rule.

Lizunova said the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl prompted her twin sister Larisa to leave Kyiv for New York City. In 1992, the rest of the family followed and would go on to form a life in Bensonhurst.

Gil, who had seven great grandchildren, “helped  raise children to my sister, and then she helped me to raise mine,” Lizunova said.

Larisa died in 2013. When the family could not afford a tombstone for her burial plot, they were given help through the New York Times' “Neediest Cases Fund.”

"She basically raised me since day one," said Gil's granddaughter Natasha Famighetti. "She was the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever met.”

She added, "Nothing gave her more joy than just being around her family."

Galina Berbzhinskaya, who lives in Gil’s building, recalled her as “a good woman.”

Berbzhinskaya said her husband and Gil’s daughter died on the same day, sparking a connection between the two.

In April 2020, when New York City became a global epicenter of the COVID pandemic, Gil’s husband contracted the virus and died in the hospital. She continued living in her Cropsey Avenue building and remained an active member of the Jewish Community Center of Bensonhurst until she was killed in the crash, her daughter said.

Mayya Gil and her husband Vilyam with former Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2006.

Gil was the second elderly person killed crossing a Brooklyn street so far this year. On Jan. 10, 87-year-old Esther Sealy died after she was struck by a driver on East 88th Street near Avenue L in Canarsie, according to the NYPD.

Transportation advocacy group Transportation Alternatives said 46 senior pedestrians were killed in car crashes across the city last year.