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Ukrainian Holocaust survivor, 96, killed in his home by Russian shelling

“Putin managed to ‘accomplish’ what even Hitler couldn’t,” Defense of Ukraine, a government organization, stated.   

By World Israel News Staff

A 96-year-old Holocaust survivor lost his life on Friday when his home in Kharkiv, Ukraine, was attacked, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry stated.

Boris Romanchenko survived four Nazi concentration camps — Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Dora and Bergen-Belsen — “but he was killed by a Russian projectile,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in tribute to the elderly victim.

The Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation confirmed Romanchenko’s death in a tweet on Monday.

“Now he has been killed by a bullet that hit his house…We are deeply disturbed,” the foundation said.

Romachenko was deported to the German city of Dortmund in 1942 where he became a forced laborer, the Washington Post reported. After a failed attempt to escape, he was transferred to Buchenwald and later to other camps. He was freed in 1945.

“[Russian President] Putin managed to ‘accomplish’ what even Hitler couldn’t,” Defense of Ukraine, a government organization, stated.

Kharkiv’s Jewish community of over 80,000 has been hit hard since the Russian invasion began last month.

A boys’ yeshiva in the city that also serves as a synagogue was damaged last week after it was hit directly by rocket fire, JNS reported, adding that it was the third Jewish communal building to be damaged in Kharkiv.

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Chabad-Lubavitch of Kharkiv’s kindergarten, the Ohr Avner Jewish day school and the main synagogue previously suffered damage from nearby bombings.

Several organizations — Jewish and non-Jewish — have been working round the clock in Ukraine to move  members of vulnerable communities, including Holocaust survivors out of the war zone, AP reported.

“These are already survivors of severe trauma. And now with this war, they are experiencing that trauma all over again,”  said a paralegal working with the rescuers. She herself is a refugee from the former Soviet Union and granddaughter of a Ukrainian Holocaust survivor.