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The Buchenwald Memorial foundation on Monday (March 21) said that a 96-year-old man named Boris Romantschenko, who survived four Nazi concentration camps during World War II, was killed Friday (March 18) by a Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
The Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials foundation said in a statement: “It is with dismay that we have to report the violent death of Boris Romantschenko in the war in Ukraine.”
The statement cited information from his son and granddaughter. It revealed that Romantschenko died at home after his building was bombed in the heavily shelled eastern city.
Yulia Romanchenko, who is Boris’ granddaughter, told CNN that she “learned about the shelling of Saltivka residential district on March 18 from social networks”.
“I asked locals if they knew anything about my grandfather’s house. They sent me a video of a burning house. I found out about this after the curfew and therefore I could not go there immediately,” Yulia added.
The foundation described Romantschenko as “a close friend” and further stated that he was committed to educating others about the horrors of the Nazi era.
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Romantschenko had been vice president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee.
Romantschenko was born into a family of farmers in Bondari, near the Ukrainian city of Sumy, on January 20, 1926.
Although he was not Jewish, he was taken by German soldiers when he was 16 years old and deported to the German city of Dortmund in 1942 to work as a forced labourer, as part of Nazi intimidation tactics against the Ukrainian population at the time.
A failed escape attempt landed him in the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp in 1943. He also spent time in the camps of Peenemuende, where he was forced to help build V2 rockets, and in Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen.
“This is what they call the ‘operation of denazification’. The whole world sees Russia’s cruelty,” said the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s widely disbelieved claim that ridding Ukraine of Nazis was one reason for Moscow’s invasion.
The Buchenwald Memorial said Romantschenko’s death “shows how dangerous the war in Ukraine is, also for concentration camp survivors”.
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