“Official representatives of Russia and Belarus are not welcome at this year’s ceremonies,” the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Monument Foundation said in a statement, adding that the two countries’ embassies in Berlin had been informed of the decision. The war in Ukraine is overshadowing the celebration, “especially the violent death of Boris Romanshenko,” of a camp survivor killed by Russian bombings that hit his apartment in the city of Kharkiv, the foundation said. He said the April 10 ceremony would pay tribute to Romantschenko, a detainee in four different Nazi concentration camps during World War II who was killed at his home on March 18. Romantschenko, 96, had worked for decades to educate others about the horrors of the Nazi era and was vice-president for Ukraine of the Buchenwald-Dora international commission. At the anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation in 2015, he called for a struggle to create a “world of peace and freedom.” The foundation said that instead of including officials from Russia or Belarus, it would invite representatives of Ukraine and Russia of “civil society” to pay tribute to the victims of the camp from the former Soviet Union. Fifteen survivors from Germany, Canada, France, Israel, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Hungary and the United States are also expected to attend. The foundation noted that 30 German memory groups have set up an aid network to help survivors of the Nazi persecution in Ukraine, as many are in “existential danger” in the face of the Russian invasion. It intends to donate food and medicine and provide practical assistance to survivors fleeing Ukraine, picking them up at the Ukrainian border or finding accommodation in Germany. There are still about 42,000 survivors of Nazi crimes living in Ukraine, according to the aid network. More than 76,000 men, women and children died in Buchenwald and the Mittelbau-Dora satellite camp during World War II. US forces liberated the camp in 1945.
