প্রকাশ: 22/03/2022
Boris Romantschenko, who survived four Nazi concentration
camps during World War II, has been killed by Russian shelling that struck his
flat in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, the Buchenwald Memorial foundation said
Monday. He was 96 years old.
"It is with dismay that we have to report the violent
death of Boris Romantschenko in the war in Ukraine," the Buchenwald and
Mittelbau-Dora Memorials foundation said in a statement.
Romantschenko died at home on March 18 after his building
was bombed in the heavily shelled eastern city, the statement said, citing
information from his son and granddaughter.
Describing him as "a close friend", the foundation
said Romantschenko was committed to educating others about the horrors of the
Nazi era and had been vice president of the Buchenwald-Dora International
Committee.
Romantschenko was born into a family of farmers in Bondari,
near the Ukrainian city of Sumy, on January 20, 1926.
Although he was not Jewish, he was taken by German soldiers
when he was 16 years old and deported to the German city of Dortmund in 1942 to
work as a forced labourer, as part of Nazi intimidation tactics against the
Ukrainian population at the time.
A failed escape attempt landed him in the notorious
Buchenwald concentration camp in 1943. He also spent time in the camps of
Peenemuende, where he was forced to help build V2 rockets, and in
Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen.
"This is what they call the 'operation of denazification',"
said the head of Ukraine's presidential office, Andriy Yermak, referring to
Russian President Vladimir Putin's widely disbelieved claim that ridding
Ukraine of Nazis was one reason for Moscow's invasion.
"The whole world sees Russia's cruelty," Yermak
added.
The Buchenwald Memorial said Romantschenko's death
"shows how dangerous the war in Ukraine is, also for concentration camp
survivors".
The foundation said it had partnered with 30 other
remembrance groups and associations to set up an "aid network" to support
former Nazi persecutees in Ukraine, including through donations of food and
medicine.
It also plans to offer practical help to survivors fleeing
Ukraine by picking them up from the Ukrainian border or finding them
accommodation in Germany.
There are still some 42,000 survivors of Nazi crimes living
in Ukraine, according to the aid network.
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