Funeral for Holocaust survivor, 96, killed during Russian shelling in Ukraine
A 96-year-old Holocaust survivor has been laid to rest in Ukraine after he was killed during Russia’s bombardment of Kharkiv last week.
Boris Romanchenko lived through Nazi confinement in four different concentration camps over the course of the Second World War.
He died when shelling hit his flat in the war-ravaged Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Friday.
The country’s foreign and defence ministries condemned the death, with the latter saying ‘Putin managed to “accomplish” what even Hitler couldn’t’.
Ukraine’s second-largest city has come under heavy throughout the invasion, which Vladimir Putin has called a ‘special military operation’ to disarm and ‘denazify’ its neighbour.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said of Mr Romanchenko’s death on Monday: ‘Please think about how many things he has come through.
‘But he was killed by a Russian strike which hit an ordinary Kharkiv multi-storey building. With each day of this war, it becomes more obvious what denazification means to them.’
Mr Romanchenko was laid to rest on Thursday, with relatives including his son and granddaughter braving the risk of further artillery barrages to pay their final respects.
He was born on January 20, 1926, in Bondari, near the city of Sumy, according to a statement from the Buchenwald memorial.
Mr Romanchenko was deported to Dortmund in 1942, where he had to do forced mining labour.
After a failed escape attempt, he was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1943, where more than 53,000 people were killed during the Second World War.
He was then sent to Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom, where he worked as a forced labourer on the V2 rocket programme, before being moved to the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp and then on to Bergen-Belsen, the statement said.
It added: ‘The horrific death of Boris Romanchenko shows how threatening the war in Ukraine is for the concentration camp survivors.
‘We mourn the loss of a close friend.’
According to the memorial, Mr Romanchenko had served for many years as the vice president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee, devoting himself to documenting the Nazi crimes.
Russia-Ukraine war: Everything you need to know
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, the country has suffered widespread damages and loss of life amid a major bombing campaign.
Aid workers have warned that the worst hit areas could run out of food and medicine by Friday.
Millions of people have fled the country, with thousands of British people opening up their homes to Ukrainian refugees.
Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn't shown any signs of calling off the attack anytime soon, with his spokesperson claiming that he is refusing to rule out using nuclear weapons.
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The United Nations human rights office said on Thursday that at least 1,035 civilians have been killed and 1,650 wounded in one month of war in Ukraine.
Some 90 children were among the dead, it said in a statement, adding that the true figures were believed to be considerably higher due to delays in reporting from areas with intense hostilities, including the southern besieged city of Mariupol.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a separate statement that 4.3 million children – more than half of the country’s estimated 7.5 million residents under 18 – have been uprooted, including more than 1.8 million who have fled abroad.
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