The announcement of the death of Boris Romantschenko aroused, Monday, March 21, a wave of emotions on social networks.

This survivor of the Nazi concentration camps was killed in the bombardment by the Russian army of the building where he lived, in Kharkiv, in the north-east of Ukraine.

"A strike hit the multi-storey building in which he lived. His apartment burned down", describes in a press release the Foundation which expresses its "horror" and "mourns the loss of a close friend", indicated the German Memorial Foundation of Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora.

Besieged by Russian forces since the start of their offensive, the city of Kharkiv has been the target of several deadly strikes that have hit civilian buildings.

Aged 96, this former prisoner of Buchenwald and vice-president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee for Ukraine died on Friday, adds the organization which specifies that it was informed of his death by his granddaughter.

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Wie wir von Angehörigen erfahren haben, wurde unser Freund Boris Romantschenko, der die KZs #Buchenwald, #Peenemünde, #Dora und #BergenBelsen überlebt hatte, am vergangenen Freitag bei einem Bombenangriff auf sein Wohnhaus in #Charkiw getötet.

Wir sind zutiefst bestürzt.

pic.twitter.com/SOMAdpQn35

— Stift.

Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora (@Buchenwald_Dora) March 21, 2022

Boris Romantschenko had been deported to Germany in 1942, at the age of 16, as a forced laborer.

It was after an attempted escape that he was sent to the Buchenwald camp in central Germany in 1943. He was then interned in Peenemünde, Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen, specifies the Foundation. .

"The war in Ukraine is a threat to the survivors of the concentration camps"

Before returning to Ukraine, he had to serve several years in the Soviet army stationed in East Germany, according to the charity association Maximilian Kolbe, engaged in material and psychological support for former prisoners of Nazi camps.

The association had been in contact for several years with Boris Romantschenko who was ill and could hardly leave the apartment where he lived alone, on the eighth floor of a building in Kharkiv, said an employee of the NGO.

"The horrific death of Boris Romantschenko shows how much the war in Ukraine is a threat to the survivors of the concentration camps", underlines the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, which is trying to send them medicine and food.

She estimates that around 42,000 survivors of Nazi persecution currently live in Ukraine.

Present at a commemoration ceremony marking the anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald camp in 2012, Boris Romantschenko had read there, recalls the Foundation, the Buchenwald oath: "The construction of a new world of peace and freedom is our ideal".

In this photo taken on April 12, 2015 on the site of the former Buchenwald concentration camp, Boris Romantschenko (second from right) speaks during a ceremony.

AFP - MICHAEL REICHEL

"He survived Hitler, he was assassinated by Putin"

Vladimir Putin continues to justify the invasion of Ukraine by the need to "denazify" this country, a propaganda argument and a reference to the Second World War denounced in particular by historians.

In a tweet, Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister did not fail to underline this paradox when the death of Boris Romantschenko was announced: "An unspeakable crime. He survived Hitler, he was assassinated by Putin ".

Borys Romanchenko, 96, survived four Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Mittelbau-Dora, Bergen-Belsen.

He lived his quiet life in Kharkiv until recently.

Last Friday a Russian bomb hit his house and killed him.

Unspeakable crime.

Survived Hitler, murdered by Putin.

pic.twitter.com/QYJ4xrNYC9

— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 21, 2022

The chief of staff of the Ukrainian president, Andriy Yermak, also mentioned in a message on Telegram the death of the former deportee, "a 96-year-old prisoner of the Nazi concentration camps who survived Buchenwald. But he died in 2022 of a Russian missile in his own apartment in Kharkiv. This is what they call "the denazification operation".

With AFP

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