Image by Hillel Russia

The Jewish student organization Hillel Russia mourned a former program director who died aboard a Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt.

Anna Tishinskaya,27, was en route from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg aboard a charter flight operated by the Russian Kogalymavia airline when it crashed in the Sinai peninsula on Saturday. All 224 passengers, most of them Russian tourists, died, Egyptian officials said.

Tishinskaya “was part of the family,” even though she no longer worked for Hillel, the group said.“Anya, you were incredibly talented, swift, fearless, sincere, kind and bright. You were a truly extraordinary person,” the statement read.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Tishinskaya graduated from St. Petersburg State University, where she studied history, according to a report on the Russian-language website isrageo.com. She took part in the activities of Hillel Russia and the Israeli Culture Center in St. Petersburg, where she was organizing events as late as 2012.

Radical Islamists claimed responsibility for downing the plane, but security experts said that was unlikely. A plane flying at the altitude at which the Kogalymavia airliner dropped off the radar would be beyond the range of weapons that militants in the area are known to possess, the BBC reported.

Egyptian authorities are working to retrieve the plane’s black box to determine what caused the crash.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re in the middle of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Make a Passover Gift Today!

$90 $180

$360

Other amount