Trump’s DEI Purge Hits Netherlands, Memorials to Black WWII Soldiers Taken Down

Panels Removed Without Warning in Spring 2025

The Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten holds roughly 8,300 fallen U.S. soldiers from World War II.

For 80 years, Dutch families have adopted every single grave, leaving flowers and passing the responsibility to their children.

But sometime this spring, visitors to the cemetery noticed something missing. Two panels honoring Black American soldiers had vanished from the visitors center without explanation.

What happened next turned a quiet cemetery into an international flashpoint, and the story behind those panels goes back to a brutal winter, a segregated army, and 260 Black men with shovels.

FOIA Emails Trace Removal to DEI Orders

For months, nobody could explain why the panels disappeared.

The American Battle Monuments Commission, the U.S. agency that maintains memorial sites abroad, offered vague answers.

Then in December 2025, two media organizations published emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request showing that Trump’s DEI policies directly prompted the commission to take down the panels.

The ABMC told the AP that the panel discussing segregation did not fall within its commemorative mission.

The other panel, it claimed, was simply rotated out.

George Pruitt Drowned Saving a Comrade

One of the removed panels told the story of Technician Fourth Class George H. Pruitt of the 43rd Signal Heavy Construction Battalion, a 23-year-old soldier who drowned near Bremen, Germany on June 10, 1945.

While helping to lay a telephone line across a river, he saw a fellow soldier fall into the water. Without hesitation and fully aware of the danger, Pruitt plunged in after him, still wearing his heavy uniform.

He was posthumously awarded the Soldier’s Medal, which his widow Blanche received during an Armistice Day ceremony in his hometown that November. He is buried at Margraten in Plot L, Row 4, Grave 4.

The 960th Dug Graves in Freezing Mud

The 960th Quartermaster Service Company was a segregated unit of 260 Black soldiers sent to Margraten in the fall of 1944.

They received no mortuary training and had no coffins, so the dead were buried in mattress covers. Winter came early in 1944 and was unusually harsh.

They dug with picks and shovels in the bitter cold, each man assigned to dig three graves a day. Graves collapsed from snow and rain, thick clay stuck to the shovels, and the work never stopped.

By war’s end, more than 28,000 servicemen had been buried at Margraten.

Jefferson Wiggins Kept the Secret 65 Years

First Sergeant Jefferson Wiggins was 19 years old when he led the gravediggers. He came home and never spoke the word Margraten, not even to his wife of more than 40 years.

In 2009, Dutch oral historian Mieke Kirkels called him, and he realized he was the only member of the 960th still alive to tell the story.

He finally shared his memories, which became the book From Alabama to Margraten. Wiggins died in 2013, four years after liberating himself of the haunting memories.

Black Troops Found Acceptance in Europe

When the 960th arrived in Margraten, few Dutch had ever seen a Black person. The Nazis had told villagers that Black Americans had tails like monkeys and ate human flesh.

One girl touched Wiggins’s hand and stared at her own, as if expecting it to change color. But fear turned to gratitude.

Historian Linda Hervieux, author of the book Forgotten, said that when Black soldiers came to Europe, what they found was people who accepted them, welcomed them, and treated them as the heroes they were.

Every Grave Has Been Adopted Since 1945

In 1945, a village official suggested that each grave and memorial name be adopted by local families. Every single one has remained adopted ever since.

When the waiting list hit 1,000 names in 2021, the foundation closed it. Currently, more than 700 hopeful adopters remain.

In 2017, the program was designated part of the Dutch National Inventory of Immaterial Cultural Heritage, protected the same way as historic buildings.

Adopters visit regularly, leave flowers on birthdays and holidays, and often research the soldiers to learn who they were.

The Panels Were Only a Year Old

The panels were added to the cemetery’s $6. 7 million visitor center in 2024, titled African American Servicemembers in WWII: Fighting on Two Fronts.

Janice Wiggins, Jefferson’s widow, pushed for the display after the center opened in 2023 with no mention of the Black soldiers who built the cemetery.

She worked with former U.S. Ambassador Shefali Razdan Duggal and Dutch historian Mieke Kirkels to get the panels installed.

Janice rejected claims the panels were meant to rotate, saying they were intended to be permanent.

Dutch Officials Call the Removal Unacceptable

The mayor of Eijsden-Margraten sent a letter asking the commission to reconsider, writing that the story of the Black Liberators and the 172 Black soldiers buried at Margraten deserves permanent attention.

Dutch senator Theo Bovens, chair of the Black Liberators foundation, said his organization was never told the panels would be removed.

Eleven of fifteen parties in the provincial assembly have backed a permanent memorial to Black liberators and called the removal indecent.

A TV Show Tried to Put Them Back

In November 2025, the Dutch television program Even tot hier recreated the two panels and briefly installed them near the cemetery during a Saturday evening ceremony.

Police and military police removed them immediately afterward.

The broadcaster said the panels will be handed over to the Black Liberators foundation, which is now seeking a permanent location.

The program also arranged hay bales in a nearby field spelling out the name of a Black soldier, visible until the next satellite update.

The Dutch Will Remember Their Own Way

The panels may be gone from the visitors center, but Margraten has not forgotten.

On America Square, in front of the Eijsden-Margraten city hall, there is a small park named for Jefferson Wiggins, the Black soldier who at 19 dug many of the graves.

The Black Liberators foundation continues searching for a permanent memorial site. Visitors have filled the cemetery guestbook with objections to the removal.

And every grave at Margraten still has a Dutch family tending it, just as they have for 80 years. The Americans who built this place are buried here.

The Dutch have not stopped honoring them.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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