Russian attack in Ukraine kills 96-year-old Holocaust survivor

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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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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