US removal of panels honoring Black soldiers at WWII cemetery in the
Netherlands draws backlash
[December 30, 2025]
By MOLLY QUELL
MARGRATEN, Netherlands (AP) — Ever since a U.S. military cemetery in the
southern Netherlands removed two displays recognizing Black troops who
helped to liberate Europe from the Nazis, visitors have filled the
guestbook with objections.
Sometime in the spring, the American Battle Monuments Commission, the
U.S. government agency responsible for maintaining memorial sites
outside of the United States, removed the panels from the visitors
center at the American Cemetery in Margraten, the final resting place
for roughly 8,300 U.S. soldiers, set in rolling hills near the border
with Belgium and Germany.
The move came after U.S. President Donald Trump issued a series of
executive orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “Our
country will be woke no longer,” Trump said in an address to Congress in
March.
The removal, carried out without public explanation, has angered Dutch
officials, the families of U.S. soldiers and the local residents who
honor the American sacrifice by caring for the graves.
U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands Joe Popolo seemed to support the
removal of the displays. “The signs at Margraten are not intended to
promote an agenda that criticizes America,” he wrote on social media
following a visit to the cemetery after the controversy had erupted.
Popolo declined a request for comment.
The displays highlighted the sacrifices of Black Americans
One display told the story of 23-year-old George H. Pruitt, a Black
soldier buried at the cemetery, who died attempting to rescue a comrade
from drowning in 1945. The other described the U.S. policy of racial
segregation in place during World War II.
Some 1 million Black soldiers enlisted in the U.S. military during the
war, serving in separate units, mostly doing menial tasks but also
fighting in some combat missions. An all-Black unit dug the thousands of
graves in Margraten during the brutal 1944-45 season of famine in the
German-occupied Netherlands known in 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 some 30 miles (50 kilometers) away 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 something was wrong with me because
I was the wrong color,” he told The Associated Press. “I was the only
dark child at school.”
Linssen together 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 around the disappearance of the panels, two
media organizations — the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and online
media Dutch News — this month published emails obtained through a U.S.
Freedom of Information Act request showing that Trump’s DEI policies
directly prompted the commission to take down the panels.
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The sun sets over the graves of more than 8.300 WWII soldiers at the
Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands, Thursday,
Dec. 11, 2025, where the American Battle Monuments Commission
removed two displays honoring Black liberators from the visitors
center. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
The White House did not respond to queries from AP about the removed
panels.
The American Battle Monuments Commission did not respond to queries
from AP about the revelations. Earlier, the ABMC told the AP that
the panel that discussed segregation “did not fall within (the)
commemorative mission.''
It also said that the panel about Pruitt was “rotated” out. The
replacement panel features Leslie Loveland, a white soldier killed
in Germany in 1945, who is buried at Margraten.
Chair of the Black Liberators foundation and Dutch senator Theo
Bovens said his organization, which pushed for the inclusion of the
panels at the visitors center, was not informed that they were
removed. He told AP it is “strange” that the U.S. commission feels
the panels are 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 tend to the graves at the cemetery. People who adopt a
grave visit it regularly and leave flowers on the fallen soldier’s
birthday and other holidays. The responsibility is often passed down
through Dutch families, and there is a waiting list to adopt graves
of the U.S. soldiers.
The locals remember the sacrifices of the Black soldiers
Both the city and the province where the cemetery is located have
demanded the panels be returned. 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
seeking a permanent location for them.
The Black Liberators is also looking to find a permanent location
for a memorial for the Black soldiers who gave their lives to free
the Dutch.
On America Square, in front of the Eijsden-Margraten city hall,
there is a small park named for Jefferson Wiggins, a Black solider
who, at age 19, dug many of the graves at Margraten when he was
stationed in the Netherlands.
In his memoir, published posthumously in 2014, he describes burying
the bodies of his white comrades who he was barred from fraternizing
with while they were alive.
When Black soldiers came to Europe in the Second World War, ’’what
they found was people who accepted them, who welcomed them, who
treated them as the heroes that they were. And that includes the
Netherlands,″ said Linda Hervieux, whose book “Forgotten” chronicles
Black soldiers who fought on D-Day and segregation they faced back
home.
The removal of the panels, she said, “follows a historical pattern
of writing out the stories of men and women of color in the United
States."
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