Konovalets's Grave, Rotterdam
The grave of the OUN leader killed by an NKVD agent in 1938; in 2026 his remains were returned to Ukraine.
Yevhen Konovalets (1891, Zashkiv – 1938, Rotterdam) was a co-founder and head of the Ukrainian Military Organisation and of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists. On 23 May 1938 in Rotterdam he met a man he took for a like-minded ally: it was the NKVD agent Pavlo Sudoplatov, who handed over a box of sweets with a bomb hidden inside. The explosion killed the colonel on Coolsingel street. Konovalets was buried in Crooswijk cemetery, and in 1939 a monument in the form of a massive four-armed cross, designed by the artist Oksana Liaturynska, rose over the grave; for decades the Ukrainian community of the Netherlands looked after it. On 11 August 2026 the remains were exhumed for reburial at the National Military Memorial Cemetery, and on 13 August the monument, which had stood for 87 years, was taken to Zashkiv. On 18 August 2026 Konovalets was reburied at the National Military Memorial Cemetery in Markhalivka near Kyiv — temporarily, until the Pantheon at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is created. After his death the leadership of the Ukrainian Nationalists was taken over by Andrii Melnyk; after the 1940 split this branch is called the OUN(m).
Algemene Begraafplaats Crooswijk, Rotterdam. On 11.08.2026 the remains of Yevhen Konovalets were exhumed for reburial at the National Military Memorial Cemetery in Kyiv (BNR, 11.08.2026), and the tombstone monument was taken to the family estate museum in Zashkiv, Lviv region (Lviv Regional Council, 13.08.2026). At the site of the former grave there are neither remains nor a headstone.