Refugee stories: Death, destruction and loss
Among those killed, 96-year-old Ukrainian survivor of four Nazi concentration camps
Yulia Bondarieva spent 10 days in a basement as Russian planes flew over and bombs fell on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
Now, having reached safety in Poland, her only wish is for her twin sister in the besieged city of Mariupol to leave, too.
“They have been in the basement since February 24, they have not been out at all,” Bondarieva said. “They are running out of food and water.”
Bondarieva spoke to her sister by phone recently. The fear of what will happen to her in the encircled and bombed-out city has been overwhelming.
“She does not know how to leave the city,” Bondarieva, 24, said after arriving in the Polish town of Medyka.
Mariupol authorities have said only about 10 per cent of the city’s population of 430,000 has managed to flee over the past week. The Mariupol City Council has asserted several thousand residents were taken into Russia against their will.
Bondarieva said her sister told her of “Russian soldiers walking around the city” in Mariupol, and people not being allowed out.
Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been fighting block-by-block for control of Mariupol, a strategic port on the Azov Sea, where at least 2300 people have died.
Maria Fiodorova, a 77-year-old refugee from Mariupol who yesterday arrived in Medyka, said 90 per cent of the city has been destroyed.
“There are no buildings there (in Mariupol) any more,” she said.
For Maryna Galla, just listening to birds singing as she arrived in Poland was blissful after the sound of shelling and death in Mariupol. She hopes to reach Germany next.
“It’s finally getting better,” she said. The United Nations says nearly 3.5 million have left Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.
Valentina Ketchena never thought that at the age of 70 she would be forced to leave her home in Kriviy Rig, and see the town in southern Ukraine almost deserted as people fled the Russian invasion for safety.
She will stay now with friends in Poland, hoping to return home soon. “It (is a) very difficult time.”
Zoryana Maksimovich is from the city of Lviv, near the Polish border. Though it has seen less destruction, her children are frightened and cried every night when they had to go to the basement for protection.
“They don’t understand clearly what is going on but in a few days they are going to ask me about where their father is.”
Like most refugees, Maksimovich, 40, had to flee without her husband — men aged 18 to 60 are forbidden from leaving the country and have stayed to fight. “I don’t know how I will explain,” she said.
Once in Poland, refugees can apply for an ID number that enables them to work and access health, social and other services.
Irina Cherkas, 31, from the Poltava region, was afraid her children could be targeted in Russian attacks.
“For our children’s safety we decided to leave Ukraine. “When the war ends we will go back home immediately.”
Meanwhile, A 96-year-old Ukrainian who survived four Nazi concentration camps has been killed by Russian shelling in Kharkiv, it has emerged.
Boris Romanchenko died when a Russian artillery shell hit his block of flats last week.
He was killed by indiscriminate shellfire on a civilian area in what Russia says is an operation to
“denazify” Ukraine.
During World War II, Romanchenko was held in a series of Nazi concentration camps as a political prisoner and prisoner-of-war.
He was forced to work as a labourer on the V2 rockets fired on London and other cities in the UK during the final years of the war.
Born in the Ukrainian city of Sumy in 1926, he was captured by Nazi troops in 1942 and deported to Dortmund. He tried to escape but was caught and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, where more than 56,000 are believed to have died.
Romanchenko was later transferred to Peenemu¨nde and MittelbauDora camps, where he was forced to work on the V2 rockets. More than 12,000 prisoners died as a result of forced labour on the rockets.
He was finally transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where at least 50,000 prisoners died, including Anne Frank. The death toll at the camp also included 20,000 Soviet POWs.
Romanchenko devoted the latter years of his life to commemorating the victims of the Nazis, and was a vice-president of the BuchenwaldDora International Committee.
In 2012 he took part in a memorial ceremony at Buchenwald and gave the oath in Russian: “Our aim is the construction of a new world of peace and freedom”.