Two information plaques, one on racial segregation, honoring the memory of black soldiers who helped liberate the Netherlands during World War II, have been removed by the United States from the Margraten military cemetery, located in southern Dutch territory, where nearly 200 of those soldiers lie. The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), responsible for the site, justified the fact by pointing out that one of the panels will be displayed in other military cemeteries in the United States – there are 26 of them together with 31 monuments and headstones – scattered in 17 countries. Another poster, one that explained segregation in the U.S. Army during that war, was removed from that rotation, after the panel determined the information it contained was “interpretive,” the ABMC said in an email to this newspaper.
Local authorities fear, however, that the measure responds to the White House’s campaign against diversity, equality and inclusion, and are calling for the panels to be replaced. The plaques were located in the Margraten Visitor Center where the story of fallen soldiers is told, and the first commemorated George H. Pruitt, who died in 1945, at the age of 23, while trying to save a comrade from a river in Germany. The second explained the policy of segregation prevalent in the US Army until its abolition in 1948.
For this reason, and despite the million enlisted, black soldiers usually performed support jobs or, as in that cemetery, as gravediggers for their comrades. Most of the time they received mutilated bodies and operated in terrible conditions of cold, rain and mud.
This second plaque included the words of Private Jefferson Wiggins, who served in the fall of 1944 as a first sergeant in the 960th Quartermaster Company. He said his black comrades were “crying and traumatized” as they dug the graves. In 1945 he was commissioned first lieutenant and became one of the first black officers in the United States Army.
In its email response to questions from this newspaper, the ABMC confirms the withdrawal of that panel on racism in the following terms: “Based on an internal review of interpretive content by the previous ABMC secretary, the agency withdrew a single panel in March that displayed a quote from First Lieutenant Jefferson Wiggins, an African-American soldier who survived the war.”
The US commission states in its message to EL PAÍS that the Margraten Visitor Center “has 15 magnetic panels of military character, designed to be removed and rotated throughout the exhibition”. In this way, he continues, “as many individual stories as possible are highlighted”. Four of those plaques, the message continues, “depict African-American servicemen buried in the cemetery, and the one dedicated to Technician Fourth Class George H. Pruitt is not on display, although it remains part” of the rotating exhibit on fallen American servicemen.
Programs aimed at diversity and equality in the United States have faced major cuts from President Donald Trump, and the trend has reached the Pentagon and the military. The decrees affected federal agencies and departments, but also public procurement by companies that contemplated inclusive criteria.
Shock in the country
Dutch historian Kees Ribbens is not convinced by the US explanations. On the contrary, it seems that for the current American administration of President Donald Trump “the memory of racial segregation may not be welcome”. It would be bad, in his opinion, “for Trump to want to rewrite the history of the Second World War, because this too is European”, he says in a telephone conversation. A senior researcher at the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), Ribbens points out that residents of the cemetery and nearby towns don’t just bring flowers to the graves. Since 1945, many families have adopted them and guarantee their perfect condition as a sign of gratitude for the liberation of the country. For this reason the cemetery and the deceased soldiers are naturally part of the social fabric and the removal of the panels caused an uproar. The same expert indicates that what happened could be an attempt – by the United States – to present history in an “uncritical way that perhaps they can consider non-divisive”. But if that were the case, it “would not help improve our understanding of a complex and dark past,” he says.
Opening in December 2023, the Visitor Center initially screened a film in which Black soldiers appeared only momentarily as they dug graves. However, there was no mention of them building the Margraten cemetery or how they were treated due to segregation. The then US Ambassador to the Netherlands, Shefali Razdan Duggal – during President Joe Biden’s tenure – was briefed on the situation, and in 2024 the ABMC added information reflecting the work of these soldiers.
This Monday Alain Krijnen, mayor of Eijsden-Margraten, the municipality that includes the cemetery, sent a note to the ABMC asking it to reconsider the removal of the panels and to pay “permanent attention to the stories of African American soldiers.” He also hopes to meet with the new American ambassador, Joseph Popolo, to discuss the case. For their part, eleven provincial parties have defined the situation as “indecent and unacceptable” and are raising the possibility of erecting a memorial to the black soldiers outside the cemetery.
Created in 1944, the Margraten Cemetery was later leased in perpetuity to the United States government, which administers it. Approximately 8,300 American soldiers who fell during the liberation of the southeastern Netherlands are buried here. According to the ABMC, the names of 1,722 others who are officially considered missing are also displayed on the site. Among these troops were 174 African-American soldiers, according to data from the Dutch Black Liberators research project. The Dutch newspaper NRC warned that the two plaques were to be set aside without publicity a few months ago. The Netherlands remained occupied throughout the war and was completely liberated on May 5, 1945. That day is a national holiday in the country.
