Margraten, Netherlands — Since two plaques honoring black troops who helped liberate Europe from the Nazis were removed from an American military cemetery in southern Holland, visitors have filled the guest book with complaints.

Sometime in the spring, the American Battle Memorial Commission, the U.S. government agency responsible for maintaining memorial sites outside the United States, removed the plaques from the visitor center at Margraten American Cemetery, the final resting place for approximately 8,300 American soldiers, set in the hills near the border with Belgium and Germany.

The move comes after President Trump issued a series of executive orders dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “Our country will not be awakened again,” he said in an address to Congress in March.

The removal, carried out without public explanation, angered Dutch officials, families of American soldiers and local residents who honor the American sacrifice by caring for the graves.

The US ambassador to the Netherlands, Joe Popolo, appears to support the removal of the display. “The signs on Margraten are not intended to promote an agenda that criticizes America,” he wrote on social media after visiting the cemetery after the controversy erupted. Popolo declined a request for comment.

One display told the story of 23-year-old George H. Pruitt, a black soldier buried in the cemetery, who died trying to save a fellow soldier from drowning in 1945. Another described America’s policy of racial segregation during World War II.

Approximately 1 million black soldiers enlisted in the U.S. military during the war, serving in separate units, mostly performing minor tasks, but also fighting in some combat missions. An all-black unit dug thousands of graves in Margraten during the brutal famine season of 1944-45. in the Netherlands under German occupation, known in the Winter of Hunger.

Cor Linssen, the 79-year-old son of a black American soldier and a Dutch mother, is one of those who oppose the removal of the plaques.

Linssen grew up some 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the cemetery and although he didn’t find out who his father was until later in life, he knew he was the son of a black soldier.

“When I was born, the nurse thought there was something wrong with me because I was the wrong color,” he told The Associated Press. – I was the only dark-skinned child at school.

Linssen, along with a group of other black child soldiers, now all in their 70s and 80s, visited the cemetery in February 2025 to see the plaques.

“It’s an important piece of history,” Linssen said. “They should return the plates.”

After months of mystery surrounding the disappearance of the panels, two media organizations – the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and online media outlet Dutch News – this month released emails obtained through US Freedom of Information Act requests showing that Trump’s DEI policy directly prompted the commission to remove the panels.

The White House did not respond to AP inquiries about the removed panels.

The American Battle Monuments Commission did not respond to AP inquiries about the discoveries. Earlier, the ABMC told the AP that the panel discussing segregation “was not part of (that) commemorative mission.”

It also said the record on Pruitt was “rotated.” The replacement plaque shows Leslie Loveland, a white soldier killed in Germany in 1945, who is buried in Margraten.

Black Liberators Foundation president and Dutch senator Theo Bovens said his organization, which advocated for the plaques to be included in the visitor center, had not been notified that they had been removed. He told the AP that it was “strange” that the US commission felt that the panels were not in their mission, since they placed them in 2024.

“Something has changed in the United States,” he said.

Bovens, who is from the region around Margraten, is one of the thousands of locals who take care of the graves at the cemetery. People who adopt the grave regularly visit and leave flowers for birthdays and other holidays of the fallen soldier. Responsibility is often passed down through Dutch families, and there is a waiting list to adopt American soldiers’ graves.

Both the city and province where the cemetery is located have requested that the plaques be returned. In November, a Dutch television program reconstructed the plaques and placed them outside the cemetery, where police quickly removed them. The show is now looking for a permanent place for them.

Black Liberators are also seeking a permanent location for a memorial to black soldiers who gave their lives to free the Dutch.

On America Square, in front of the Eijsden-Margraten town hall, there is a small park named after Jefferson Wiggins, a black soldier who at the age of 19 dug up many graves in Margraten while he was stationed in the Netherlands.

In his memoirs, published posthumously in 2014, he describes burying the bodies of his white comrades with whom he was forbidden to fraternize while they were alive.

When black soldiers came to Europe in World War II, “what they found were people who accepted them, who welcomed them, who treated them like the heroes they were. And that includes the Netherlands,” said Linda Hervieux, whose book “Forgotten” describes the black soldiers who fought on D-Day and the segregation they faced at home.

Removing the plaques, she said, “follows a historical pattern of writing the stories of men and women of color in the United States.”