MARGRATEN, Netherlands (AP) — Since a U.S. military cemetery in the southern Netherlands removed two displays recognizing black troops who helped liberate Europe from the Nazis, visitors have filled the guest book with objections.
Sometime this spring, the American Battle Monuments Commission, the U.S. government agency responsible for maintaining memorial sites outside the United States, removed the plaques from the visitor center at Margraten American Cemetery, the final resting place for about 8,300 U.S. soldiers nestled in the hills near the Belgian-German border.
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 said in a speech to Congress in March.
The removal, carried out without public explanation, angered Dutch officials, the families of American soldiers and locals who honor the American sacrifice by tending the graves.
The US ambassador to the Netherlands, Joe Popolo, appeared to support the removal of the displays. “The signs at Margraten are not intended to promote an agenda that is critical of America,” he wrote on social media following a visit to the cemetery after the controversy erupted. Popolo declined a request for comment.
The displays highlighted the sacrifices of black Americans
One screen told the story of 23-year-old George H. Pruitt, a black soldier buried at the cemetery who died trying to save a comrade from drowning in 1945. The other depicted the US policy of racial segregation in place during World War II.
About 1 million black soldiers enlisted in the US military during the war, serving in segregated units, mostly doing light duty, but also fighting in some combat missions. A black unit dug the 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 who opposes the removal of the panels.
Linssen grew up about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the cemetery, and although he didn’t learn who his father was until later in life, he knew he was the son of a black soldier.
“When I was born, the nurse thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t the wrong color,” he told The Associated Press. “I was the only dark kid at 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 see the panels.
“It’s an important part of history,” Linssen said. “They should put the panels back.”
The decision was based on Trump’s DEI policies
After months of mystery surrounding the boards’ disappearance, two news organizations — the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and online media Dutch News — this month released emails obtained through a US Freedom of Information Act request that show Trump’s DEI policies directly prompted the commission to remove the boards.
The White House did not respond to AP questions about the removed billboards.
The American Battle Monuments Commission did not respond to AP questions about the disclosures. Earlier, the ABMC told the AP that the panel that discussed segregation “does not fit into the commemorative (mission).”
He also said the panel about Pruitt was “spinned.” The replacement panel shows 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 pushed for the boards to be included at the visitor center, had not been informed they had been removed. He told the AP that it was “strange” that the US commission felt that the panels were not in their mission, as they placed them in 2024.
“Something has changed in the United States,” he said.
Bovens, who is from the region around Margraten, is one of thousands of locals who look after the graves at the cemetery. People who adopt a grave visit it regularly and leave flowers on Memorial Day and other holidays. Responsibility is often passed down through Dutch families, and there is a waiting list for adopting American soldiers’ graves.
Locals remember the sacrifices of black 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 show is now looking for a permanent location for them.
The Black Liberators are also looking to find a permanent location for a memorial to the black soldiers who gave their lives to free 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 at Margraten while stationed in the Netherlands.
In his memoirs, published posthumously in 2014, he describes burying the bodies of his white comrades with whom he was forbidden to fraternize while they were alive.
When black soldiers came to 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” chronicles the black soldiers who fought on D-Day and the segregation they faced at home.
Removing the panels, she said, “follows a historical pattern of writing the stories of black men and women in the United States.”