Jewish-Ukrainian Holocaust survivor Borys Romanchenko died from Russian airstrikes while in his Kharkiv apartment, Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba confirmed on Monday.
Romanchenko, 96-years-old, survived four Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen, Kuleba said.
"Survived [Adolf] Hitler, murdered by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin," the Ukrainian foreign minister wrote on Twitter, in a tribute to Romanchenko.
"He lived a quiet life in Kharkiv until recently..last Friday, a Russian bomb hit his house and killed him," Kuleba said, calling the airstrike on the Kharkiv apartment an "unspeakable crime."
Borys Romanchenko, 96, survived four Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Mittelbau-Dora, Bergen-Belsen. He lived his quiet life in Kharkiv until recently. Last Friday a Russian bomb hit his house and killed him. Unspeakable crime. Survived Hitler, murdered by Putin. pic.twitter.com/QYJ4xrNYC9
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 21, 2022
The Jewish community in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, suffered multiple attacks during Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24.
The yeshiva building of the Kharkiv Jewish Community was directly hit by a Russian strike, a local Chabad community said on Facebook last week. Earlier in March, the windows of Kharkiv's ancient Great Synagogue were shattered by the impact of a Russian airstrike that hit a nearby shopping center. More than 100 Jewish-Ukrainian refugees were in the basement of the synagogue at the time of the incident.
The killing of Romanchenko by Russian strikes comes a day after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky's live-streamed speech to the Knesset where Zelensky compared Russian aggression to the Holocaust.
Zelensky said the Russians were using terms like “the final solution” against the Ukrainian people. Cabinet ministers and MKs said they were offended by Zelensky’s comparisons to the Holocaust.