Ukraine: 96-year-old Holocaust survivor killed by Russian shelling in Kharkiv

The war between Russia and Ukraine continues to claim innocent lives. The most recent was a survivor of Adolf Hitler's concentration camps named Boris Romanchenko who was killed by Russian bombardment in Kharkiv at the age of 96. Romanchenko, who was a World War II veteran, died on Friday in Kharkiv, but his death was not announced until Monday. As per the reports of Mirror, the sources suggests that his death was verified by his granddaughter. During WWII, he was imprisoned at the Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Peenemünde, and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps.

His death was announced by the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial institute in Germany on Monday. It stated that Boris Romantschenko battled hard for the remembrance of Nazi crimes, adding that he was vice president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee, which is a survivors' group. His granddaughter stated that he lived in a multi-story building that was hit by a shell, according to Mirror.

Ukraine FM shared a tweet about his death

Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba shared a tweet about his death stating, "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."

The mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi expressed his condolences for Romanchenko's death on Telegram. He stated that during a 'denazification operation,' he was killed by a Russian rocket that hit his flat. He also said that Hitler's job is continued by the modern fascists. Putin has referred to his invasion of Ukraine as "denazification," wrongly alleging that Ukraine is committing genocide against its Russian-speaking people.

Romanchenko was born in 1926

Romanchenko was born in 1926 to a farming family in the village of Bondari, near Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine. In 1941, the German Nazi authority began Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, and Romanchenko was captured as a prisoner of war, according to the Guardian. He was sent to Dortmund, Germany's industrial Ruhr valley, in 1942 to serve as a forced mine labourer. He was apprehended just as he was about to board an eastbound train after attempting to flee, and was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp in January 1943. Later, Romanchenko was sent to Peenemünde, on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom, where he was forced to work on the V2 rocket programme as well as the concentration camps of Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen.

Image: @DmytroKuleba/Twitter/ AP