Maryasha Garelik, known to many in the international Chabad-Lubavitch community as Bubbe Maryasha, passed away late Wednesday night in Brooklyn.

At 106 years of age, the trajectory of her life paralleled that of the Jewish experience, beginning at the turn of the century with the pogroms against Jews by Czarist Russia, WWI, the Communist Revolution, the Russian Civil War, and the subsequent anti-semitic, persecutory policies of the communist regime of the 20s and 30s.

In the 1940s, Maryasha escaped the Nazis, fleeing to Uzbekistan. Via Paris, she arrived in the United States, where she participated in the rebuilding of Jewish life. The grand matriarch leaves many hundreds of descendants, many of them serving as Chabad Shluchim in Jewish communities around the world.

For more on Mrs. Garelick, go to Maryasha: