The German parliament on March 22 honored Boris Romanchenko, who survived several Nazi concentration camps during World War II but lost his life during an attack last week in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
Romanchenko, who was vice president of the International Buchenwald-Dora Committee, was 96 years old when he was killed in a Russian bombing attack on his apartment block.
Opening a session of parliament, deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt said Romanchenko was taken to Dortmund, Germany, as a forced laborer in 1942 and was sent to concentration camps after an escape attempt a year later.
“His death reminds us that Germany has a special historical responsibility toward Ukraine,” Goering-Eckardt said.
“Boris Romanchenko is one of thousands of dead in Ukraine. Every single life that has been taken reminds us to do everything we can to stop this cruel war that violates international law and to help people in and from Ukraine.”
The Buchenwald concentration camp memorial said on March 21 that Romanchenko, who survived Buchenwald as well as camps at Peenemunde, Dora, and Bergen-Belsen, was killed on March 18 during the fourth week of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address: "Just imagine how much he went through!”
“He survived Buchenwald, Dora, Peenemunde and Bergen-Belson, the conveyors of death created by the Nazis. And he was killed by a Russian shell that hit an ordinary Kharkiv high-rise.’”
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that in killing Romanchenko, Russian President Vladimir "Putin managed to 'accomplish' what even Hitler couldn't."
German Parliament Honors 96-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Killed In Kharkiv
Holocaust survivor Boris Romanchenko was killed in the Russian bombing of Kharkiv.