Ukraine seeks vanishing places of memory in Europe: expedition inspected 105 cemeteries and over 100,000 burials

An old cemetery with leaning stone tombstones—an illustration for an article on the search for forgotten Ukrainian burials in Europe
Фото: An old cemetery with leaning stone tombstones—an illustration for an article on the search for forgotten Ukrainian burials in Europe

The Ukrainian expedition “In Search of Heroes” has completed a large-scale survey of burial sites of soldiers of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic and other prominent Ukrainians who ended up abroad in the 20th century.

  • Search scale: Over more than 20 days, participants covered 8,700 km through seven countries—Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Germany, and Poland. At 105 cemeteries, they examined more than 100,000 graves.
  • Why graves disappear: Some Ukrainian burials abroad have already been lost. Under local rules, graves at some European cemeteries must be maintained and paid for, and if this is not done for years, the headstone and the grave itself may disappear.
  • Connection to the National Pantheon: On July 1, 2026, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law on the Ukrainian National Pantheon in Kyiv. The expedition was part of this work: among the found graves are burials of figures who, by their status, could be interred in the future Pantheon.

What the expedition has already discovered:

  • Khrystyna Sushko: The first woman officer of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic was buried in Geneva. When the expedition arrived, there was no longer a headstone at the site. According to the UINP, her remains may still be in that plot or may have been moved to a common grave.
  • New findings: The expedition found previously unknown Ukrainian burials and clarified erroneous archival data. For example, the grave of one Ukrainian figure, which literature placed in Germany, was found in France.
  • Andriy Melnyk and Yevhen Konovalets: In 2026, their remains were already brought back from Luxembourg and the Netherlands and reinterred in Ukraine. Konovalets temporarily rests at the National Military Memorial Cemetery—after the creation of the Ukrainian National Pantheon, he is planned to be moved there.

The work does not end here. According to expedition participants, hundreds of thousands of unexamined burials and places of memory remain outside Ukraine. The project's task is to find them before some of this history disappears physically.

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