US removal of cemetery signs honoring black WWII troops sparks anger in Netherlands

Margraten, Netherlands — Since an American military cemetery in the southern Netherlands removed two signs recognizing black troops who helped liberate Europe from the Nazis, visitors have filled the guestbook with objections.

In the spring, the American Battle Monuments Commission, the U.S. government agency responsible for maintaining memorial sites outside the United States, removed signs from the visitors center of the Margraten American Cemetery, the final resting place of about 8,300 U.S. troops, located in hills near the border with Belgium and Germany.

The move came after President Trump issued a series of executive orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “Our country will no longer be woke,” he said in a speech to Congress in March.

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

The American ambassador to the Netherlands, Joe Popolo, seemed in favor of removing the screens. “The signs posted in Margraten are not intended to promote an agenda critical of America,” he wrote on social media after a visit to the cemetery after the controversy broke out. Popolo declined a request for comment.

One exhibit told the story of 23-year-old George H. Pruitt, a black soldier buried at the cemetery who died while trying to save a comrade from drowning in 1945. The other described the U.S. policy of racial segregation in place during World War II.

About a million black soldiers enlisted in the U.S. Army during the war, serving in separate units, performing mostly 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 famine season in the German-occupied Netherlands, known as the Hunger Winter.

Cor Linssen, 79, the son of a black American soldier and a Dutch mother, is among those opposing the removal of the signs.

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.

“When I was born, the nurse thought there was something wrong with me because I was the wrong color,” he 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 signs.

“It’s an important part of history,” Linssen said. “They should put the signs back.”

After months of mystery surrounding the disappearance of the signs, two media organizations – the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and the online media outlet Dutch News – this month released emails obtained through a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request, showing that Trump’s DEI policies directly prompted the commission to remove the signs.

The White House did not respond to AP’s questions about the removed signs.

The American Battle Monuments Commission did not respond to AP questions about the revelations. Earlier, the ABMC told the AP that the panel that discussed segregation “was not within (the) commemorative mission.”

He also said the panel on Pruitt had been “removed.” The replacement panel depicts Leslie Loveland, a white soldier killed in Germany in 1945, buried in Margraten.

Black Liberators Foundation president and Dutch senator Theo Bovens said his organization, which had been lobbying for the panels’ inclusion in the visitors’ center, had not been informed of their removal. He told AP it was “strange” that the U.S. commission felt the panels were not part of their mission, since they placed them in 2024.

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

Bovens, from the Margraten region, is one of thousands of residents who care for the graves at the cemetery. People who adopt a grave visit it regularly and lay flowers on the fallen soldier’s birthday and other holidays. Responsibility is often passed to Dutch families, and there is a waiting list to adopt the graves of American soldiers.

The city and province where the cemetery is located demanded the return of the signs. In November, a Dutch television show recreated the signs and installed them outside the cemetery, where they were quickly removed by police. The salon is now looking for a permanent location for them.

The Black Liberators are also seeking a permanent location for a memorial to the black soldiers who gave their lives to free the Dutch.

On America Square, across from Eijsden-Margraten Town Hall, is a small park named after Jefferson Wiggins, a black soldier who, at age 19, dug numerous graves in 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 not allowed to fraternize while they were alive.

When black soldiers arrived in Europe during World War II, “they found people who accepted them, who welcomed them, who treated them like the heroes that 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 signs, she said, “follows a historical pattern of writing the stories of men and women of color in the United States.”