A 96-year-old man who survived the Holocaust was killed by a Russian bomb in Ukraine Friday, according to his granddaughter.
Borys Romanchenko had lived through four concentration camps including Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Dora and Bergen-Belsen, the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial institute reported.
Boris Romantschenko survived the concentration camps #Buchenwald, #Peenemünde, #Dora and #BergenBelsen. Now he has been killed by a bullet that hit his house in #Charkiv, #Ukraine. He was 96 years old. We are stunned. pic.twitter.com/ZZIK2OdbAu
— Stift. Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora (@Buchenwald_Dora) March 21, 2022
He was killed Friday after a shell hit his apartment building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, according to his granddaughter, the memorial institute reported. Romanchenko had been the vice president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee, and had “worked intensively on the memory of Nazi crimes,” according to the institute.
Romanchenko “lived his quiet life in Kharkiv until recently. Last Friday a Russian bomb hit his house and killed him. Unspeakable crime,” Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs stated in a tweet.
“Survived Hitler, murdered by Putin,” Kuleba continued. (RELATED: Russian Forces Bomb Civilian Apartment Complex, Causing Innocent Casualties)
One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated goals in invading Ukraine was to “de-Nazify” the country, despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy being Jewish.
Kharkiv has been under constant attack from Russian forces since the war began. The yeshiva building of the Ukrainian Kharkiv Jewish Community was directly hit by a rocket Tuesday, The Jerusalem Post reported. The windows of the Kharkiv Synagogue were also broken.