Trump Administration Removed Plaques Honoring Black WWII Heroes from Cemetery

In 2025, the Trump administration’s war-memorial agency removed Dutch plaques honoring Black U.S. World War II liberators, an act that coincided with Washington’s rollback of DEI programs.

Image by Abdelafatah Mukhtar

It began quietly, as acts of forgetting often do. In the Dutch province of Limburg, visitors to the American War Cemetery at Margraten—rows of white crosses stretching toward the trees—noticed something missing. Two panels, once depicting Black American soldiers who had helped liberate the Netherlands, had vanished. No vandal…