US Removal of Panels on Black World War II Soldiers in Netherlands Draws Back – National

Ever since a US military cemetery in the southern Netherlands removed two memorials depicting Black soldiers who helped liberate Europe from the Nazis, visitors have filled the visitor book with objections.

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

The move came after US President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “Our country is not going to wake up,” Trump told Congress in March.

The removal, carried out without public explanation, has angered Dutch officials, families of US soldiers and local residents who honor the American sacrifice by maintaining the cemetery.

US Ambassador to the Netherlands Joe Popolo appeared to support the removal of the exhibits. “Margraten’s signs are not intended to promote an anti-American agenda,” he wrote on social media after visiting the cemetery after the controversy erupted. Popolo declined a request for comment.

Another exhibit told the story of 23-year-old George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier buried in the cemetery, who died trying to save a comrade from drowning in 1945. One described the US policy of racial segregation that existed during World War II.

About one million Black soldiers enlisted in the US military during the war, serving in various units, mostly performing menial duties but also fighting in other combat systems. 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 Winter of Hunger.

Cor Linssen, 79, the son of a black American soldier and a Dutch mother, is one of those who oppose the removal of the panels.

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

“When I was born, the nurse thought there was something wrong with me because I was the wrong color,” she told the Associated Press. “I was the only black kid in school.”

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

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

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

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

The American Battle Monuments Commission did not respond to questions from the AP about the revelations. Earlier, the ABMC told the AP that the panel discussing the separation “did not fall within (the) recall function.”

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It also said the panel about Pruitt was “circumscribed” and out. The replacement team includes Leslie Loveland, a white soldier killed in action in Germany in 1945, who was buried in Margraten.

The Chairman of the Black Liberators foundation and Dutch senator Theo Bovens said that his organization, which forced the panels to be installed in the visitor center, was not told to remove them. He told the AP it was “amazing” that the US commission felt that the panels were not in their mandate, as they put them in 2024.

“Something has changed in the United States,” he said.

Bovens, who is from the area around Margraten, is one of the thousands of locals who regularly visit the cemetery. People who take the grave visit it regularly and leave flowers on the fallen soldier’s birthday and other holidays. Responsibility is often passed on to Dutch families, and there is a waiting list for US military cemeteries.

The city and province where the cemetery is located have demanded that the panels be returned. In November a Dutch television program rebuilt the panels and placed them outside the cemetery, where they were quickly removed by the police. The program is now looking for a permanent place for them.

The Black Liberators are also looking to find a permanent memorial to the Black soldiers who gave their lives to free the Dutch.

In America Square, in front of the town hall of Eijsden-Margraten, there is a small park named after Jefferson Wiggins, a Black solider who, at the age of 19, dug up many graves in Margraten while working in the Netherlands.

In his memoir, published posthumously in 2014, he describes burying the bodies of his white comrades whom he was not allowed to interact with while he was alive.

When Black soldiers arrived in Europe during the Second World War, “what they found were people who welcomed them, who welcomed them, who treated them like the heroes they were. And that includes the Netherlands,” said Linda Hervieux, whose book “Forgotten” chronicles the Black soldiers who fought on D-Day and the segregation they faced at home.

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

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