The German parliament on Tuesday honored Holocaust survivor Boris Romanchenko, 96, who survived four concentration camps.
According to CNN, Romanchenko survived Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Dora and Bergen-Belsen during World War II.
On Friday, he was killed by Russian shelling of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
According to Romanchenko’s daughter, the multiple-story building where the 96-year old lived was hit by a Russian projectile.
The Buchenwald memorial institute said that Romanchenko, who was the vice president of the International Buchenwald-Dora Committee, had dedicated his life to keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust.
At the start of the German parliament’s Tuesday session, deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt honored Romanchenko.
Explaining that Romanchenko was a forced labourer in 1942 in Dortmund Germany and after attempting to escape was deported in 1942 to concentration camps, Goering-Eckardt said: “His death reminds us that Germany has a special historical responsibility toward Ukraine.”
“Boris Romanchenko is one of thousands of dead in Ukraine. Every single life that has been taken reminds us to do everything we can to stop this cruel war that violates international law and to help people in and from Ukraine.”
A moment of silence was held by parliamentarians in memory of Romanchenko and others who have been killed in the war, CTV News reported.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner commented that Romanchenko “survived four concentration camps and was now killed in the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine. His fate shows both the criminal character of Russian policy and why Germany is showing solidarity with Ukraine, why we must show solidarity.”