A 96-year-old man who managed to survive Nazi concentration camps during World War II, lost his life in Russian airstrikes on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Boris Romanchenko lost his life in a Russian attack on Friday last week.

"We are shocked to confirm the violent death of Boris Romanchenko, whose niece informed us on Monday morning that he died last Friday after a bomb or rocket hit the multistorey building where he lived in Kharkiv and his apartment was burned out," said a spokesperson for the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial foundation.

Romanchenko was born in 1926 in Bondari village outside the city of Sumy in Ukraine. He was not Jewish but was taken as a prisoner of war by German soldiers in 1941.

Boris Romantschenko survived the concentration camps #Buchenwald, #Peenemünde, #Dora and #BergenBelsen. Now he has been killed by a bullet that hit his house in #Charkiv, #Ukraine. He was 96 years old. We are stunned. pic.twitter.com/ZZIK2OdbAu

— Stift. Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora (@Buchenwald_Dora) March 21, 2022

He was kept in Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps among several others during his years in captivity under the Nazi regime.

He was deported to Dortmund where he was made to work as a labourer in a mine and had even tried to flee in 1942, but was captured just when he was about to catch a train, according to a report in The Guardian.

"The war had completely surprised us, I wasn't able to flee," he had said during an interview in April 2004. He was later transported to Buchenwald concentration camp and also spent some time at Peenemuende camp.

Romantschenko had been vice president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee and had committed his life educating others about the horrors he witnessed in the Nazi era.

The Buchenwald Memorial said that his death "shows how dangerous the war in Ukraine is, also for concentration camp survivors."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday condemned the Russian action and said:

"Please think about how many things he has come through. But [he] was killed by a Russian strike, which hit an ordinary Kharkiv multi-storey building. With each day of this war, it becomes more obvious what denazification means to them."

Ukraine's Defence Ministry also condemned the attack and wrote: "Putin managed to 'accomplish' what even Hitler couldn't." The exact death toll is not yet known, officials claim that at least 250 civilians have died in Kharkiv.

Ukraine war
The attack on the Retroville is the most powerful to have hit Kyiv since the start of the war Photo: AFP / ARIS MESSINIS
Russia Ukraine