“Bubby Maryasha” was a tiny sweet lady with sparkling eyes, and a warm smile that softly voiced a kind Yiddish greeting. Maryasha Gorelik passed away this January 11 at the age of 106.

Nice and sweet, yet firm and resolute, Maryasha would stand or sit for hours in the cold and heat into her nineties, with a large charity collection box raising money for her beloved Oholei Torah yeshiva.

The under 5 feet diminutive woman was a towering giant who endured and outlived the 20th centuries’ fiercest tyrant. She stood up to a regime that shot her husband, leaving her alone to raise six children, aged 1 to 14.

Bubby Maryasha’s much sought after wisdom came from decades of trial by fire. When she was 5, her father was killed in a pogrom, and her grandparents, with whom she and her mother lived, were subsequently executed by Stalin’s henchmen.

Maryasha’s determination was apparent even as a child. A Cossack once entered her grandfather’s store and began clearing off the shelves into his bag. Watching the food and goods disappear, little Maryasha spoke up. "Please, Sir, either pay for everything or leave it alone. Otherwise we will all starve!" she cried out.

Her grandfather was petrified. Who dared to stand up to an armed Cossack? But it worked – the Cossack took a look at the brave little girl and left.

Years later, Bubby Maryasha and her husband Elchonon and their six children were evicted from their apartment into the deep snow because he refused to work on the Sabbath. Active in the Jewish underground, he performed secretive circumcisions and was arrested in the 1930s. Maryasha clung to the hope that he somehow survived, but in 1953 the Soviets told her that he had died of natural causes. In 1998, an unsealed KGB file revealed that he was shot three months after his arrest for the crime of being a religious Jew, spreading Jewish observance, and refusing to turn in other Jews.

Elchonon was unable to protect his family from the harsh realities, but he gave them the spiritual strength to endure. He would tell his children to always take care of their mother and never to worry about any obstacle because “A Jew has only G-d to fear,” and “you are never alone for G-d is always with you.”

The Communist regime finally had enough of this troublesome family. Evicting them into the snow didn't break their spirit. Arresting the father didn't break their spirit. Threatening to lock the synagogue didn't break their spirit. There must be some way to get those kids indoctrinated in a Communist school! So they notified Maryasha that armed KGB men would personally escort her children to school the next morning.

A well meaning friend tried persuading her to let her children attend the Communist school, but Maryasha resisted: "Stalin will fall before my children are indoctrinated their way." Soviet anti-religious education taught children to scorn Judaism and to rat on their parents.

Harassed by the authorities, Maryasha’s family moved six times in three years; one home was a stable. She had to divide and hide the children in her attempt to stay one step ahead of the KGB.

But Maryasha was resourceful, growing potatoes in a synagogue backyard to feed her family, with enough left over for a profit that paid to repair the dilapidated synagogue.

When the Germans advanced into Russia in 1941, Garelik and her brood escaped to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, where she knitted and sold socks to survive.

Maryasha once borrowed a ‘sock board’ necessary to manufacture socks from a man who trusted her to return it the next morning. She had to go on a long train ride to procure the board, but on the return trip, the police searched the train passengers for signs of private businesses. A woman with a bag of tomatoes was arrested. What would happen to her children if they found her board?

She realized that the board would be useless if she was arrested, so she threw it out the train window just before they searched her. It was pitch black outside, but she got off at the next stop and searched futilely in the snow for this precious board. Early next morning she got some wood and scraped together money to hire someone to make her 10 sock boards. After returning one to the man, she rented or sold the other 8 to other people, netting a profit and turning the loss into a gain.

In addition to supporting the family, she gave them an uncompromising Torah education, working grueling hours to pay for the best teachers.

In 1946, Maryasha smuggled out of Russia and ended up in a German DP camp. She then moved to Paris, where she established a Jewish girls' school that still functions. Immigrating to the US in 1953, she started an organization for visiting the sick, and helped establish a school for which she was always collecting funds.

A granddaughter relates: “I was visiting Bubby and there was a knock at the door. Bubby Maryasha told me to leave the room. But I noticed that she opened the door, handed over an envelope, and wished the recipient well.

Afterwards, I asked my grandmother what it was all about. "I help certain people every month. It's bad enough being sick and needy. I didn't want to embarrass her.”

Maryasha ran a second hand used-clothing store whose proceeds supported the yeshiva. “I was visiting Bubby at the Bazaar and saw her pick a button out of a basket and put down a nickel.

“Bubby, what are you doing?" I asked her. "I'm paying for the button," she responded.

"But you don't even take a salary. Surely you can take a button for free?"

Bubby Maryasha explained. "G-d gave me two healthy feet. I can walk, I can take care of myself and also help others. That's all the pay I need."

Bubby Maryasha is survived by over 500 descendants, many serving as Chabad emissaries in the US, Australia, China, England, France, Panama, Poland and South Africa, working to strengthen Jewish life with their matriarch’s love and dedication.