(CNN) — Holocaust survivor Borys Romanchenko, 96, was killed in a Russian attack on the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Friday.
The Buchenwald concentration camp memorial institute confirmed Romanchenko’s death in a series of tweets.
Romanchenko survived the Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Dora and Bergen-Belsen camps during World War II, the institute said. And he added that the entity was “surprised” by the news of his death.
He also noted that Romanchenko worked “intensely on the memory of Nazi crimes and was vice president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee.”
Borys Romanchenko (second right) at the Buchenwald memorial site in 2015. (Credit: MICHAEL REICHEL/Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Me/AFP via Getty Images)
The discovery of Buchenwald, on April 11, 1945, began the release of more than 21,000 prisoners in one of the largest Nazi concentration camps of World War II.
According to the official US military account of the liberation of the concentration camp, this was “a symbol of the cold-blooded cruelty of the German Nazi state”, where thousands of political prisoners starved to death and “others were burned, beaten, hanged”. and shot to death.”
Romanchenko’s record in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Romanchenko’s granddaughter told the memorial institute that her grandfather lived in an apartment block in Kharkiv that came under Russian attack.
He survived the Holocaust, but not Putin’s war
In 2012, Romanchenko attended an event commemorating the liberation of Buchenwald, where he read an oath dedicated to “creating a new world where peace and freedom reign,” the institute said.
In 2018, a Kharkiv newspaper reported on his visit to Buchenwald on the 73rd anniversary of the camp’s liberation by US forces.
“The event was attended by the last surviving Buchenwald prisoners from Ukraine and Belarus: Borys Romanchenko from Kharkiv, Oleksandr Bychok from Kyiv and Andriy Moiseenko from Minsk,” the report said.
Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, referred to Romanchenko’s death on his Telegram account.
“This is what they call the ‘denazification operation,'” he said, referring to Russia’s claim that its invasion of Ukraine is designed to save the country from Nazi elements.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called Romanchenko’s death a “heinous crime” on Twitter.
“He survived Hitler, (but was) assassinated by Putin,” he wrote.
The northeastern city of Kharkiv has come under heavy missile and rocket attacks since the Russian invasion began but is still not completely surrounded, Ukrainian officials said Monday.