Displays Honoring Black Troops Removed From netherlands Cemetery

MARGRATEN, Netherlands – Visitors have filled the guestbook with objections since a U.S. military cemetery in the southern Netherlands removed two displays recognizing Black troops who helped liberate Europe from the Nazis.

The American Battle Monuments Commission, the U.S. government agency responsible for maintaining memorial sites outside the United States, removed the panels from the visitors center at the American Cemetery in Margraten sometime in the spring. The cemetery is the final resting place for roughly 8,300 U.S. soldiers, set in rolling hills near the border with Belgium and Germany.

This move followed President Donald Trump’s issuance of executive orders ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. “Our country will be woke no longer,” Trump stated in an address to Congress in March.

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

U.S. 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 criticizes America,” he wrote on social media after the controversy erupted. Popolo declined a request for comment.

One display told the story of George H. Pruitt, a 23-year-old 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 during World War II.

Approximately 1 million Black soldiers enlisted in the U.S. military during the war, serving in seperate units and often performing menial tasks, though some also participated in 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 as the Hunger Winter.

Cor Linssen, the 79-year-old son of a Black American soldier and a Dutch mother, opposes the removal of the panels.

Linssen grew up about 30 miles 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.

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