Boris Romanchenko, 96, survived four Nazi concentration camps before a Russian strike killed him in his home last Friday.
Romanchenko, who lived in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, was reportedly killed when a Russian projectile struck his house. The official Twitter account for the memorial at Buchenwald-Dora — one of the camps in which Romanchenko spent part of his captivity — eulogized him.
The tweet noted that the deceased had been vice-president of the International Committee Buchenwald-Dora, and his goal was to ensure to preserve the memory of the Nazi regime’s crimes against humanity.
Как мы узнали от его близких, наш друг Борис Романченко, который пережил нацистские лагеря #Buchenwald, #Peenemünde, #Dora и #BergenBelsen, был убит в прошлую пятницу в результате взрыва бомбы в своем доме в #Харькове. Мы глубоко встревожены. pic.twitter.com/hgJeL6gkGT
— Stift. Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora (@Buchenwald_Dora) March 21, 2022
Translation:
As we learned from his loved ones, our friend Boris Romanchenko, who survived the Nazi camps #Buchenwald, #Peenemünde, #Dora, and #BergenBelsen, was killed last Friday in a bomb blast at his home in #Харькове. We are deeply disturbed.”
По словам внучки, он жил в многоэтажном здании, пораженное снарядом. Борис Романченко интенсивно работал над памятью о нацистских преступлениях и был вице-президентом Международного комитета Бухенвальд-Дора.
— Stift. Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora (@Buchenwald_Dora) March 21, 2022
Translation:
According to his granddaughter, he lived in a multi-storey building, hit by a shell. Boris Romanchenko worked intensively on the memory of Nazi crimes and was vice-president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee.
В 2012 году Борис Романченко (второй справа на фото) зачитал клятву Бухенвальда "Создание нового мира, где господствуют мир и свобода" во время празднования годовщины освобождения концлагеря Бухенвальд. pic.twitter.com/CjUPVVp0de
— Stift. Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora (@Buchenwald_Dora) March 21, 2022
Translation:
In 2012, Boris Romanchenko (second from right in the photo) read the Buchenwald oath “Creating a new world where peace and freedom reign” during the celebration of the anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Romanchenko survived internment at Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Mittelbau-Dora, and Bergen-Belsen — the last of which was actually a complex of camps that housed thousands, many of whom had survived the death marches from other camps as the Russian Army gained ground. It was eventually liberated by the British in April of 1945, who found the camp filled with some 50,000 prisoners — most suffering from various degrees of malnutrition — and 10,000 corpses that had not yet been buried.
Mediaite noted that on the same day Romanchenko was killed, Russian President Vladimir Putin was standing on a rally stage in Moscow claiming that the Ukrainians were Nazis and that the Russian Army was only doing its part to liberate the people from an oppressive regime.
Putin has repeatedly claimed that Ukraine is under the thumb of a Nazi regime, as The Daily Wire reported:
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a statement in which he said his actions were to implement the “demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine.”
The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who was democratically elected, is Jewish. He said on Wednesday, “You are told we are Nazis, but how can a people support Nazis that gave more than 8 million lives for the victory over Nazism? How can I be a Nazi? Tell my grandpa, who went through the whole war in the infantry of the Soviet Army and died as a colonel in independent Ukraine.”
Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, tweeted, “In his attempt to justify the unjustifiable, #Russia’s assault on #Ukraine, Putin referred to a fictional genocide & set goal of ‘denazification of Ukraine,’ a country that overwhelmingly elected a Jew president. Goebbels & Hitler would have been impressed.”