Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️

2/ The Dutch newspaper reports that two memorial panels installed at the NAC were removed some time earlier this year. They commemorated African-American soldiers who helped liberate Europe from German occupation during World War II.

3/ One of the two panels described how a million African-Americans volunteered for service during World War II, but had to fight against both the enemy and racism on their own side, including segregation within the army itself that confined many to supporting roles.

4/ One of those roles was burying the dead, a highly traumatic duty as many of the bodies were severely mutilated. The cemetery was constructed by the 960th Quartermaster Service Company, an all-Black unit of 260 men under the command of a White officer (as was usual).

5/ The site of the cemetery was established by Captain Joseph Shomon, the head of the 611th Graves Registration Company, while the task of digging it and burying the bodies was given to the 960th QMSC during September-November 1944.

6/ First Sergeant Jefferson Wiggins oversaw the work. He later recalled that when the men arrived, they were confronted with the sight of thousands of dead bodies lying on a tarp. There were no coffins, so the bodies had to be tied up in mattress covers where the men dug graves.

7/ The diggers had to cope with the smell of decomposing bodies, rain, snow, wind, mud and flooding. The ground was so sodden that machinery couldn't be used.

8/ Wiggins says that the gravedigging was so traumatising that no one talked during the day, except for the few who would pray over the graves and some who quietly cried.

9/ "So, there we were. A group of Black Americans confronted with all these dead white Americans… When they were alive, we couldn’t sit in the same room."

10/ A second panel was dedicated to telephone engineer George H. Pruitt, who died on June 10, 1945, while trying to save a comrade who had fallen into a river.

Dutch researchers and historians say that they are shocked and outraged by the move.

11/ Theo Bovens, the chairman of the Black Liberators in the Netherlands foundation and also leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Appeal party, says that he intends to raise the removal with the new US Ambassador to the Netherlands, Joe Popolo.

12/ He calls the lack of attention paid to Black liberators "truly insufficient," and notes: "Approximately 12.5 percent of the American liberators were of African-American descent." His organisation had campaigned for their recognition, which had been lacking for decades.

13/ "Not only did they play a crucial role in the construction of the cemetery in Margraten, 172 of them also received their final resting place there."

8,000 Americans lie at Margraten, which also commemorates 1,700 still missing.

14/ Professor Kees Ribbens, senior researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, says that the removal appears to be the result of a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which is currently the focus of controversy over anti-Semitism.

15/ He says: "In March, a complaint against the [American Battle Monuments Commission] appeared on the website of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think tank."

16/ "[The memorial] allegedly evaded Trump's executive order to halt policies promoting diversity and inclusion." /end

Sources:
🔹 nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/11…
🔹 blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2018/…
🔹 web.archive.org/web/2025072014…

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1987450…

Update here:

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1987811787484414220