Israeli woman arrested after allegedly burying Holocaust-survivor mother in garden

Officers attended Tolstikov’s apartment in Karmiel but received no answer when they knocked, according to a force spokesperson.

Chief Inspector Alon Reuveni, head of the Galilee District’s Special Crime Unit, said: “The home was filled with cobwebs, the windows sealed shut with tape. The atmosphere was strange and unsettling.”

Kantor and her partner were subsequently arrested and questioned separately by the police. It reportedly emerged during the interviews that Tolsikov had died in April 2024, with Kantor saying her mother had been buried in Haifa and her partner insisting he had buried her himself “in a kibbutz in the north”, according to Ynet.

The man refused to say where this kibbutz was and took his own life a short time after he was questioned.

And a tip-off from a local contractor, who had worked on Tolstikov’s home a year earlier, led to the discovery of her body in the garden.

Reuveni said: “We began digging in that spot. At a depth of three meters, the operator noticed a piece of clothing and stopped immediately. We went down and found... a body - it was her.”

“It turned out that for two days after her death, the daughter and her partner stored her body in an old ice cream freezer in the yard.

“They simply never reported her death and kept withdrawing the funds for over a year and a half."

Tolsikov will now be given a proper funeral “attended by all the officers who took part in the search," Reuveni said.

"In 26 years of service, I’ve seen terrible cases, but this is one of the hardest - a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor buried in her own yard by her family,” he concluded.

Kantor remains under investigation on suspicion of multiple offences, including aggravated fraud, obstruction of justice, failure to report a death, and breach of legal duty. Police are awaiting Tolsikov’s autopsy results to determine her cause of death.