Borys Romanchenko, a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor who went through four concentration camps during World War II, was killed Friday by a Russian strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
His death was confirmed by the Buchenwald Memorial, which said it was "stunned" by the news. Romanchenko, who survived the Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Dora, and Bergen-Belsen camps, later served as vice president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee and worked "intensively on the memory of Nazi crimes," the Buchenwald Memorial said.
Romanchenko's granddaughter, Yulia Romanchenko, told CNN her grandfather lived in Kharkiv's Saltivka district. There was shelling in the area, and when she arrived at her grandfather's house, she found it "completely burned down. There were no windows, no balcony, nothing in his apartment."
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Borys Romanchenko was one of the last living Buchenwald survivors in Ukraine, and in recent years attended events there commemorating its 1945 liberation. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted on Monday that Romanchenko's death was an "unspeakable crime. Survived Hitler, murdered by Putin."
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