Netherlands WWII cemetery removes displays honoring Black soldiers

The Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten, the only American military cemetery in the Netherlands, has quietly removed panels displaying the contributions of Black American soldiers during WWII, sparking outrage from Dutch and American citizens.

One of the two displays featured an overall history of Black American military personnel fighting a double V campaign — victory at home and abroad — while the other told the story of George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier in the 43rd Signal Construction Battalion who drowned a month after the war’s end while attempting to save a comrade’s life in a German river.

The two panels were added to the visitor center in September 2024 after the American Battle Monuments Commission, a U.S. government agency that oversees the cemetery, received criticism from families and historians for not including the contributions of Black service members and their experiences fighting in the Netherlands.

At the time of publishing, ABMC did not respond to requests for comment from Military Times. The commission, however, told Dutch news outlets that one panel is “off display, though not out of rotation,” although a second panel was “retired.”

The panels were reportedly rotated out in early March, one month after President Donald Trump’s executive order terminated diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives across the federal government.

The same month the panels were removed, The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, contacted the ABMC for its supposed failure to comply with Trump’s anti-DEI initiatives.

“ABMC is fully compliant with the president’s executive order,” wrote its chief of public affairs to Heritage. “ABMC does not have a stand-alone DEI office or any DEI contracts. ABMC’s chief diversity officer has been placed on administrative leave, pending additional guidance from [the Office of Personnel Management].”

Priscilla Rayson, ABMC’s chief diversity officer, was placed on administrative leave shortly thereafter.

Kees Ribbens, a senior researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and a history professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, was among the first to draw attention to the displays’ removal in Dutch media, telling The Guardian, “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.”

Among such men was 1st Sgt. Jefferson Wiggins of the 960th Quartermaster Service Company, one of more than 900,000 Black men and women who served in the U.S. military during WWII.

Wiggins and the men of the 960th QSC were tasked with the grim job of burying American dead in Margraten.

What was once a fruit orchard would become the final resting place for some 8,300 U.S. soldiers, including 172 Black servicemen. In 2009, Wiggins recounted to historian Mieke Kirkels how the work was done under horrific conditions, often with only rudimentary tools like pickaxes and shovels to dig the graves.

“There was a permanent arrival of bodies, the whole day long. Sundays included, seven days a week,” Wiggins recalled. “I find it difficult, even now, to read in the paper that soldiers ‘gave their lives.’ … All those boys in Margraten, their lives were taken away.”

He continued, “And here we all were — this group of Black Americans having to deal with these bodies of White Americans. The stark reality was we had to bury those soldiers although we couldn’t sit in the same room with them when they were alive.”

Wiggin’s widow, Janice, rejected ABMC’s statements that the panels’ removal was part of a rotation, telling CNN that the “panels were never intended to be part of a traveling exhibit or rotation. [The panels] were intended to be a permanent part of the Visitors Center exhibits.”

Upon learning of the panels’ removal, Dutch politicians and civilians have appealed to both ABMC and Joseph Popolo Jr., the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, to have the displays reinstated.

On Monday, Alain Krijnen, the mayor of Eijsden-Margraten, sent a letter commission, writing, “We would greatly appreciate it if the story of the Black Liberators — like the 172 Black Liberators buried in Margraten — could be given permanent attention in the visitor center, and [we ask you to] therefore reconsider the removal of the displays.

“We cherish our good and long-standing relationship and consider the ABMC an excellent storyteller and manager of the American Cemetery in Margraten. We are convinced that you will seriously consider this request for permanent attention to the story of the Black Liberators in the visitor center.”