US removal of cemetery panels honoring black WWII troops sparks anger in Netherlands

Margraten, Netherlands — Ever since a U.S. military cemetery in the southern Netherlands removed two signs recognizing the black troops who helped liberate Europe from the Nazis, visitors have filled the guest book with objections.

Sometime in the spring, the American Battle Monuments Commission, the American government agency responsible for maintaining memorial sites outside the United States, removed panels from the visitor center of the American Cemetery in Margraten, the final resting place of approximately 8,300 American soldiers, located in hills near the border with Belgium and Germany.

The move came after President Trump issued a series of executive orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “Our country will never wake up again,” he said in a speech to Congress in March.

The expulsion, carried out without public explanation, has angered Dutch officials, families of American soldiers and local residents who honor American sacrifice by caring for graves.

The US ambassador to the Netherlands, Joe Popolo, appeared to support removing the displays. “The posters in Margraten are not intended to promote an agenda that criticizes the United States,” he wrote on social media after a visit to the cemetery after the controversy broke out. Popolo declined a request for comment.

One exhibit told the story of 23-year-old George H. Pruitt, a black soldier buried in the cemetery, who died trying to rescue a comrade from drowning in 1945. The other described the American policy of racial segregation in place during World War II.

About a million black soldiers enlisted in the U.S. military during the war, serving in separate units, mostly performing menial tasks but also fighting some combat missions. An all-black unit dug thousands of graves in Margraten during the brutal 1944-45 famine season in the German-occupied Netherlands, known as the Hunger Winter.

Cor Linssen, the 79-year-old son of a black American soldier and a Dutch mother, is one of those opposed to the panels’ removal.

Linssen grew up about 30 miles (50 kilometers) away from the cemetery, and although he did not know who his father was until later in life, he learned that he was the son of a black soldier.

“When I was born, the nurse thought something was wrong with me because I was the wrong color,” he told The News. “I was the only brown kid in school.”

Linssen, along with a group of other children of black soldiers, now all in their 70s and 80s, visited the cemetery in February 2025 to view the panels.

“It’s an important part of history,” Linssen said. “They should put the panels back.”

After months of mystery surrounding the panels’ disappearance, two media organizations, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and online outlet Dutch News, this month released emails obtained through a US Freedom of Information Act request showing that Trump’s DEI policies directly prompted the commission to remove the panels.

The White House did not respond to AP questions about the removed panels.

The American Battle Monuments Commission did not respond to AP questions about the revelations. Previously, the ABMC told the AP that the panel that discussed segregation “did not fall within (the) memorial mission.”

He also said the panel on Pruitt was “rotated.” The replacement panel features Leslie Loveland, a white soldier killed in Germany in 1945, who is buried at Margraten.

Black Liberators foundation president and Dutch senator Theo Bovens said his organization, which lobbied for the inclusion of the panels in the visitor center, was not informed that they had been removed. He told the AP that it is “strange” that the US commission feels the panels are not in their mission, since they were placed in 2024.

“Something has changed in America,” he said.

Bovens, originally from the Margraten region, is one of thousands of locals who care for the graves in the cemetery. People who adopt a grave visit it regularly and leave flowers on the fallen soldier’s birthday and other holidays. Responsibility is often passed down from father to son and there is a waiting list to adopt the graves of American soldiers.

Both the city and the province where the cemetery is located have demanded the return of the panels. In November, a Dutch television program recreated the panels and installed them outside the cemetery, where they were quickly removed by police. The program is now looking for a permanent location for them.

The Black Liberators are also seeking to find a permanent location for a monument to the black soldiers who gave their lives to liberate the Dutch.

In America Square, in front of the Eijsden-Margraten town hall, there is a small park named after Jefferson Wiggins, a black soldier who, at the age of 19, dug many of the graves in Margraten when he was stationed in the Netherlands.

In his memoirs, published posthumously in 2014, he describes burying the bodies of his white comrades with whom he was prohibited from fraternizing while they were alive.

When black soldiers arrived in Europe in World War II, “what they found were people who accepted them, who welcomed them, who treated them like the heroes they were.” And that includes the Netherlands,” said Linda Hervieux, whose book “Forgotten” tells the story of the black soldiers who fought on D-Day and the segregation they faced in their country.

The removal of the panels, he said, “follows a historical pattern of writing the stories of men and women of color in the United States.”