After surviving the Holocaust and being imprisoned four different concentration campsBoris Romanchenko died on Friday after a fire caused by a Russian attack on his building in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. The news was published today by Romantschenko’s son and granddaughter and later picked up by the Buchenwald and MittelbauDora Concentration Camp Memorial Foundation. Boris had 96 years oldBorn on the January 20, 1926 in Bondari, near Sumy. He had been caught 1942 deported to Dortmund by the National Socialists as a Soviet communist. He had tried to escape but was caught and transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp in January 1943. He was also a prisoner in Peenemünde, MittelbauDora and BergenBelsen, where he was forced to help build the Nazi Army’s V2 rockets. in the 2015, on the anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald, he added the sentence “Our idea is to build a new world of peace and freedom” to his speech, part of the oath of the concentration camp survivors. The director of the Foundation for the Remembrance of the Concentration Camps JensChristian Wagner said he was saddened by the loss. In the photo released by the foundation, Romanchenko can be seen in the striped uniform he used to wear to Holocaust memorial ceremonies, which he often attended. The man is pictured in front of the entrance to the Buchenwald camp under the inscription “To each his own”. On the chest is the red triangle, a symbol assigned to nonJewish political prisoners.
