Administrator Margraten removed panels about black liberators on his own initiative

The panels about black liberators in the visitors center of the American cemetery in Margraten have not been removed on direct orders from the Trump administration. The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) removed them themselves as a precaution. The manager of memorial sites wanted to prevent them from becoming the target of criticism from the Make America Great Againmovement and other Republicans.

This is evident from an internal email exchange from the ABMC. This was requested by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, an international news agency. After a decree from the Trump administration that campaigned against “discriminatory equality ideology”, Charles Djou, chairman of the ABMC, sent an email in which he asked people within his organization to see if there were any statements that could upset Washington. For that reason, a panel on the role of black liberators in and around the cemetery in Margraten became the subject of discussion. It described how they also had to fight racial discrimination during the war.

Mutual emails also revealed that the panel in question was not originally part of the exhibition in the visitor center. This only came after a protest: Shefali Razdan Duggal, the American ambassador to the Netherlands during the Biden administration, advocated mentioning the double struggle of the black soldiers.

Just to be sure

After the White House decree, the ABMC decided to remove the information. “That panel has to go. To be honest, it should never have been there,” emailed Robert Dalessandro, then vice-chairman and now chairman of the ABMC.

Another panel with a short biography of a black soldier was initially allowed to remain hanging because it only focused on his military efforts. Later it was removed – just to be sure.

NRC released the removal in November. The ABMC then announced that it involved “rotating” parts of the permanent exhibition. Later, the organization presented a new lecture to the NOS: attention to the struggle for equal rights waged by African-American soldiers would no longer fit in with “the memorial mission”.

The new American ambassador to the Netherlands Joe Popolo wrote that the signs in Magraten are not intended “to promote an agenda that criticizes America.”

The disappearance of the panels has since been met with a lot of criticism. In and around the municipality of Eijsden-Margraten, calls soon arose to honor the black liberators with a monument outside the cemetery. 34 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives expressed their concerns in a letter to the ABMC about the removal of panels about black liberators in the memorial center of the American cemetery in Margraten. They asked for the signs to be put back.

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