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March 21 (UPI) — Borys Romanchenko, a 96-year-old who survived four Nazi concentration camps during World War II, was killed late last week in Russian shelling of his home in the besieged southwestern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, authorities and officials confirmed Monday.
The Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, which preserves sites of Nazi war crimes, said in a statement that Romanchenko was killed Friday when a Russian missile hit his apartment building as Kremlin forces continued its onslaught of the city.
“With horror, we have to report on Borys Romanchenko’s violent death in the war in Ukraine,” the foundation, for which Romanchenko was vice president in Ukrainian of its international Buchenwald survivors committee, said. “We mourn the loss of a close friend. We wish his son and granddaughter, who sent us the sad news, much strength in these difficult times.”
Born in Ukraine’s Bondari village near the northeastern city of Sumy in January 1926, Romanchenko became a victim of Nazi war crimes in 1942 when he was forced to perform labor for the war machine. He was then interned at the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp in January 1943 after a failed escape attempt before being moved to Peenemunde camp where he help build V2 rockets.
After that, he was moved to concentration camps in Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “managed to ‘accomplish’ what even Hitler couldn’t,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement concerning Romanchenko’s death.
According to United Nations data, as of Sunday, 925 people have been killed and another 1,496 have been injured in Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24, though it states that the actual figures are believed to be considerably higher.
In Kharkiv Region, at least 276 people were killed, including 15 children, it said.
The foundation said Romanchenko worked “intensively” to preserve the memory of Nazi war crimes during his life, and in April 2015 at a ceremony before the former Buchenwald concentration camp to mark its liberation 70 years prior, Romanchenko recited the oath of Buchenwald survivors.
“Build a new world of peace and freedom is our ideal,” he is quoted by the foundation as having said during the event.
“Borys Romanchenko’s horrific deaths show how threatening the war in Ukraine is for concentration camp survivors,” the foundation said.
Many online have commented in anger on the fact that Russian forces have killed a victim of Nazi war crimes during a war Putin launched under the pretext of denazifying Ukraine.
“Unspeakable crime,” Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, tweeted about Romanchenko’s death. “Survived Hitler, murdered by Putin.”
