At the American military cemetery in Margraten, recognisable by its thousands of white crosses, memorial panels commemorating black American soldiers have disappeared. ‘This is in line with the Trump administration's policy,’ says Kees Ribbens, endowed professor at ESHCC and senior researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. NRC interviewed him about the situation. The matter also received
These are black Americans who played a role in liberating the Netherlands from German occupation during the Second World War. The panels at Margraten, which tell personal stories about those who died, had only been there since 2024. ‘Initially, the exhibition did not pay any attention to African-American soldiers,’ Ribbens notes. However, the new panels have now been quietly removed by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC).
“I grew up in South Limburg but it was not until much later that I learned that the cemetery had been constructed by black Americans under difficult conditions, beginning in late 1944,” Ribbens said. “Families could then chose whether to leave the remains of their loved ones there or have them returned to U.S. soil when the cemetery was remodeled a few years later. People attach a lot of meaning to the fact that the graves are still there."
According to a spokesperson for the ABMC in Paris, this is a matter of “rotation”. Kees Ribbens, however, considers it consistent with the Trump administration's approach, which is opposed to diversity and inclusion policies.
“In March, the website of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think tank, published an indictment of the ABMC. It claimed that the ABMC was evading Trump's executive order to discontinue policies promoting diversity and inclusion. The author of that article is now a senior adviser at the Department of Justice. And at the ABMC, the diversity officer – named in the article in question – has been sidelined," says Ribbens.
In response, voices are now being raised in Limburg in favour of a temporary memorial site for black liberators. All parties represented in the Provincial Council of Limburg (Provinciale Staten), with the exception of the BBB, the PVV, FvD and Oos Limburg, want to quickly investigate whether a memorial – temporary or otherwise – can be erected for black American liberators. The eleven parties are asking the Provincial Executive (Gedeputeerde Staten) to explore the possibilities with the municipality of Eijsden-Margraten.
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Read the complete article and the follow-up article on Limburg on the NRC website (behind paywall and in Dutch)
Read more in the articles on The Guardian and Newsweek.
