Surviving relatives furious about whitewashing of U.S. WWII cemetery in Dutch town

World War II veterans and surviving relatives are furious about the United States government removing two panels with photos and stories of Black Americans from the American military cemetery in the Limburg town of Margraten. Joseph Popolo, the American ambassador to the Netherlands, will meet with Mayor Alain Krijnen of Eijsden-Margraten, who is pushing for the return of the panels, on Monday.

Veteran Robert Gray told NOS that the American government’s move is a “total dishonor” to the African Americans who erected most of the Margraten cemetery. “They dug the graves and buried most of the soldiers.” He is taking action with the relatives of the Black American soldiers.

Then-19-year-old Sergeant Jeffersom Wiggins was one of hundreds of Black soldiers tasked with burying the dead in the Dutch cemetery. His widow, Nancy, was one of the initiators of the panels. She pushed for the panels to be included in the exhibition after the center opened in 2023, and she realized that none of the information included mentions the African American soldiers who buried the dead there.

Her late husband would “be disappointed, but not surprised,” that the Trump administration had them removed, she told CNN. “He wasn’t naive about the world he lived in.”

The panels were added to an exhibition at the cemetery in 2024. Among other things, they described how Black Americans enlisted in the military “despite the ongoing fight for civil rights at home during an era of racist policies” and faced the “horrors of war” alongside their white countrymen.

Margaret Pender, a family member of the widow of Willey F. James Jr., who died as an army scout at the age of 25, told NOS that she is stunned and frustrated. In 1997, James Jr. and six other African-American war veterans were awarded the Medal of Honor, almost 50 years after their white counterparts in the military. “It feels like everything we stand for as Black Americans is being erased,” she told the Dutch broadcaster.

The ABMC, the American agency responsible for military cemeteries like the one in Margraten, has not responded to NOS’s questions about the panel’s removal. A spokesperson previously told NRC that the panels were just temporarily out of “rotation,” repeating the statement to CNN when asked.

The province of Limburg and the municipality of Eijsden-Margraten are pushing for the American authorities to return the panels. The Limburg politicians called the removal of the panels "indecent and unacceptable," saying that it "does not do justice to history." Eijsden-Margraten mayor Alain Krijnen will meet with the American ambassador on Monday, a municipal spokesperson told ANP.