Jellyfish

In Kharkov, 96-year-old Boris Romanchenko, a former prisoner of Nazi camps, who managed to survive in Buchenwald, died. A shell hit his apartment in a high-rise building

Hello,

THIS MESSAGE (MATERIAL) IS CREATED AND (OR) DISTRIBUTED BY A FOREIGN MASS MEDIA PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT AND (OR) A RUSSIAN LEGAL ENTITY PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT

This is Meduza's daily mailing list. Here we usually briefly talk about the main events related to the war in Ukraine that took place during the day. But today we will tell only one story.

On March 21, it became known about the death of a resident of Kharkov, 96-year-old Boris Romanchenko, a prisoner of several Nazi concentration camps. On March 18, a shell hit his apartment. Romanchenko lived in Severnaya Saltovka, an area that has been shelled by the Russian military since the first days of the war.

Boris Romanchenko was born on January 20, 1926 in the village of Bondari near Sumy. He lived there with his parents and two sisters, wrote the German newspaper Thüringische Landeszeitung (TLZ) in a 2012 article about him. During the Second World War, the village was occupied by the Germans, and in 1942, 16-year-old Romanchenko was taken to Germany to be used as a labor force.

“We compiled lists of all men from 16 to 60 and gradually took them to Germany — just so that there would be no influx into partisan detachments,” he told the Kharkiv TV channel Objective in 2014.

Romanchenko was brought to Dortmund and sent to work in a mine. A few days later there was an accident and one person died; Romanchenko and several other prisoners tried to escape, but failed. In January 1943 he was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. “Buchenwald is on the mountain, there are such blizzards, it is very cold and damp in winter. What clothes did we have? - he said in another interview with "Objective".

In Buchenwald, he first worked in a quarry, but then, posing as a 22-year-old, was able to go to Peenemünde, where work was underway on the creation of the V-2 ballistic missile. There Romanchenko worked as a locksmith for several months. Then his team was transferred to the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, where he lived and worked in underground tunnels for several months. In March 1945 he was sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Here is how he recalled the way there and arrival (quote from the video of the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center):

“We have four-axle large freight cars, but they didn’t have such large ones, but [were] two-axle. And a hundred people stood one to one. And they started taking us. True, they gave us some, I don’t remember, canned food and half of the bread. Well, we ate it right away. And they took us. And they drove. That's all - it was already the 45th year and Germany was almost completely defeated. <...> Whoever died, it’s not his, but we just even sat on [them]. And so they drove for seven days. I don’t remember whether they gave water already or [not], but there was [nothing] and they took it for seven days. And brought to Bergen-Belsen. In the camp itself, in Bergen-Belsen, it was already packed <…> from all over Germany they were taken there. <...> After seven days of hunger <...> there was no longer any strength. I, still strong enough, climbed onto the second [tier of the bed], I think: “That’s it, you won’t get out of here anyway.” Because they were brought specifically to destroy. I’m lying like that, lying, and the guy below darted in and brought two rutabaga.”

By the time he arrived in Bergen-Belsen, Romanchenko weighed 39 kilograms. The camp was liberated in April. According to an article in TLZ, he worked for three months in the Soviet military administration and then joined the Soviet army and remained in East Germany until 1950. In an interview for this article, Boris Romanchenko recalled seeing a man on a Berlin train who was a production foreman in Dora-Mittelbau. When Romanchenko asked him if he worked there, the man turned pale, but confessed. Romanchenko thanked him: according to his recollections, this man secretly left bread or cigarettes for the prisoners.

Returning to the Ukrainian SSR at the age of 24, Romanchenko was educated as a mining engineer - in his own words, he wanted to become a doctor, but considered that at his age it was too late to receive a medical education. Later, according to a publication in TLZ, he worked in the production of agricultural machinery. He retired in 1997 when he was 71 years old. It appears from various publications that he was a widower; he was survived by a son and a granddaughter. After his death, Romanchenko's granddaughter Yulia told reporters that her grandfather "always supported her", taught her to read and write.

Boris Romanchenko, according to the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dor Memorials Foundation, was the vice-president from Ukraine of the International Committee of Former Prisoners of Buchenwald-Dor. He traveled to Buchenwald many times; in the plot of "Lens" in 2010, which was timed to coincide with the next trip, there were the following words: "Boris Timofeevich explains: it's difficult to be there, but this is practically the only opportunity to meet those with whom he then experienced a terrible time, and who every year becomes less and less."

At an event in 2015, according to an obituary on the website of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, Boris Romanchenko read the Buchenwald Oath , which contains the words "The destruction of Nazism and its roots is our slogan. Building a new world of freedom, a world without war is our goal." In 2018, the Kharkiv City Hall announced another trip there by Boris Romanchenko, in the company of two more prisoners.

“[Grandfather] told a lot, a lot of stories. There is his manuscript, however, I don’t know if my father kept it or not. Grandfather did not plan to publish a book, he just wanted some memory to remain after him, ”the quotes Yulia Romanchenko. Suspilne edition

The most recent posts about Boris Romanchenko can be found on the website of the Maximilian-Kolbe-Werk Foundation , which helps prisoners of concentration camps. It said that a 95-year-old man lives alone in a one-room apartment on the eighth floor, suffers from severe pain in his legs and needs help - money for medicines and a nurse.

According to his granddaughter Yulia, Boris Romanchenko lived in his apartment in Severnaya Saltovka for more than 30 years. “I offered him to leave, but he refused. He does not walk well, does not hear well, did not agree to go, ”she said. After the shell hit in the apartment, “everything burned down completely” - according to Yulia Romanchenko, “only bones remained on the bed net, as he lay.”

The Kharkiv authorities promised to help the family of Boris Romanchenko with the removal of his remains from the apartment and with the funeral.

No war. Your Medusa