After months of heartbreaking stories of ‘COVID tragedies’ in the last year, a story came out today which shocked and moved even the most desensitized. Osnat Benshitrit was a 31-year-old mother of 4, from Givat Shmuel. When she tested positive for COVID last week, the family was not particularly worried, as she was young and completely healthy. That made it all the more shocking when her condition rapidly deteriorated and she was rushed to the hospital, where doctors found her to be suffering multiple organ failure. She was 30-weeks pregnant.
Doctors performed an emergency C-section to save the child, but after hours of heroically working to resuscitate the child, they were unable to save him. Osnat and her unborn child passed away, leaving their community in a state of utter shock.
Today at the levaya, Osnat’s four children stood weeping by her body. In a devastating video [below], her little boys cry “Ima” and wrap their arms around her shrouded body, refusing to let go. “What will I do without you,” widower Yehuda Shitrit said through sobs during the hespedim. The youngest Shitrit child is a one-year-old named Adel Shira.
Osnat, like many young women, was wary of receiving the vaccine while pregnant.
Donations are being collected to help Yehuda Benshitrit raise his four children with security and safety after this devastating tragedy.
