He survived Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, but decades later he was killed by Vladimir Putin’s troops.
Relatives of Boris Romanchenko, a Ukrainian Holocaust survivor killed by a Russian missile, gathered on Thursday to say goodbye emotionally.
Family members, including his son and granddaughter Julia, looked distraught as they gathered around the 96-year-old man’s final resting place.
Some openly wept over the crimson-covered coffin before it was gently lowered into a pre-dug grave marked with an Orthodox cross.
Scenes like this have become commonplace in Ukraine since Putin launched his devastating invasion a month ago.
Mr. Romanchenko died Friday when a rocket hit his apartment in Kharkov, Ukraine’s second city.
His extraordinary life included periods in four Nazi concentration camps between 1943 and 1945, which began after a failed attempt to escape from forced labor in Germany.
The funeral took place in a church near Kharkov, which continues to be bombed and shelled by Russian troops.
The son of Boris Romanchenko and other mourners paid tribute to the memory of a Holocaust survivor
The coffin is lowered to the final resting place – a 96-year-old man died from a rocket on Friday in Kharkiv
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has lashed out at the Russian military after the assassination, claiming it is a mockery of Putin’s claim to seek “denazification” of Ukraine.
Referring to the deceased survivor of the genocide, in an emotional video message posted on social media, he said: “Please think about what he went through.
He survived Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Peenemünde and Bergen-Belsen, the conveyors of death created by the Nazis.
“But he was killed by a Russian strike that hit an ordinary Kharkov high-rise building.
“With every day of this war, it becomes more and more obvious what ‘denazification’ means to them.
The murder was first announced by the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorial Foundation, which maintains monuments to the Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau concentration camps.
The school said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened by the death of Romanchenko.
“We mourn the loss of a close friend. We wish his son and granddaughter, who brought us the sad news, strength in these difficult times.”
A photo posted by the foundation on Twitter shows an aged Romanchenko, dressed in the blue and white stripes of a concentration camp prisoner, standing in front of the infamous phrase “Jedem Das Seine” adorning the gates of Buchenwald.
This phrase, translated as “to each his own” or “to each what he deserves,” was cynically used by the Nazis in tandem with the phrase “work sets you free” as they massacred millions of Jews.
An Orthodox cross with the names of Holocaust survivors was placed on the grave.
A mourner cries at Romanchenko’s grave, which is partially covered with flowers.
Boris Romanchenko was born on January 20, 1926 in the village of Bondari near Sumy in the North-East of Ukraine.
Although he was not Jewish, German soldiers captured him when he was 16 years old and deported him to the German city of Dortmund in 1942 to work as forced labor as part of the Nazi tactics of intimidating the Ukrainian population at the time.
As a result of an unsuccessful escape attempt in 1943, he was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp, but he also spent time in the Mittelbau-Dora subcamp, as well as in Bergen-Belsen and Peenemünde, where prisoners were forced to build V-2 rockets for the Nazi war effort. .
Despite terrible conditions, Romanchenko managed to survive a three-year Nazi captivity.
During the celebration of the anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald in 2012, a Holocaust survivor returned to the concentration camp square and declared in Russian: “Our ideal is to build a new world of peace and freedom,” part of the oath taken by survivors in the camps.
Romanchenko was a long-term vice-president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee in Ukraine and regularly participated in memorial and memory parades.
A pit for Romanchenko’s coffin is being dug in a cemetery as mourners watch.
Ukrainian President Zelenskiy has condemned the killing, which he believes was a mockery of Putin’s “denazification” claims.
Buchenwald-Dora Foundation director Jens-Christian Wagner confirmed Romanchenko’s death and said the elderly Holocaust survivor stayed close to his apartment for months for fear of contracting Covid prior to the Russian invasion.
In February, Wagner warned that Ukrainian Holocaust survivors in the country’s east were in danger as Russia launched its invasion.
He said the war was “particularly tragic for Ukrainian concentration camp survivors who suffered alongside Russian prisoners in the camps and who are now in bomb shelters, their lives threatened by Russian bombs.”
Romanchenko was a long-term vice-president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee in Ukraine and regularly participated in memorial and memory parades.
Ten million Ukrainians have fled their homes since the start of the Russian invasion last month, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
That’s almost a quarter of Ukraine’s pre-war population, which was estimated by Worldometer in 2021 at 43 million using UN data.
Kharkiv, the city of 1.4 million people where Mr. Romanchenko was killed, has been bombarded by Russian forces since their February 24 invasion.
However, the predominantly Russian-speaking city is putting up fierce resistance, and Putin’s forces have failed to break through despite being less than 25 miles from the Russian border.