Boris Romantschenko, a 96-year-old Holocaust concentration camp survivor, was killed when a Russian bomb struck his apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv according to a statement released by the Buchenwald and Mittenwald-Dora Memorials Foundation on Monday.
"It is with dismay that we have to report the violent death of Boris Romantschenko in the war in Ukraine," read the statement. The foundation said Romantschenko was killed in his home on March 18.
In an English-language Tweet released Monday, the foundation said it was "stunned" at Romantschenko's death.
"This is what they call the 'operation of denazification'," said Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine's presidential office, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin's claim that Russian troops are on a "special military operation" to rid Ukraine and Europe of Nazis. "The whole world," said Yermak, "sees Russia's cruelty."
Although not Jewish, Romantschenko was deported by the Nazis at age 16 to work as a forced laborer. He survived a total of four concentration camps, among them Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.
The foundation called Romantschenko, who served as vice president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee, a "close friend" who dedicated his life to educating others of the horrors of the Nazi era.
The Buchenwald and Mittenwald-Dora Memorials Foundation says it is currently partnering with 30 other memorial groups to assist Holocaust survivors still in Ukraine — official statistics put the number thereof at 42,000 — by setting up an aid network as well as helping those fleeing the country to find shelter in Germany.