A panel at the American war cemetery in Margraten commemorating US soldiers’ fight against racism during World War II was removed in direct response to Donald Trump’s directive against DEI.

An email conversation between officials at the American Battle Monuments Commission shows that the agency’s then secretary, Charles Djou, ordered a review of its websites and items on display after Trump published his executive order in March.

The emails were released following a freedom of information request by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency news website and have been seen by Dutch News.

Djou hoped to avoid unwanted attention from Washington by taking the offending items off display and putting them into storage “to avoid raising any ire of the administration”.

“I know the former Netherlands ambassador pushed us hard to put up a black American display at NEAC [Margraten cemetery] that I know we just re-directed as a 962nd QM panel,” he said, referring to the Biden-appointed ambassador Shefali Razdan Duggan.

Two fronts

The offending panel was headed “African American service members in WWII: fighting on two fronts” and described how Black soldiers faced discrimination in the segregated US army.

It included a quote from 1st Lieutenant Jefferson Wiggins, a 19-year-old soldier who was on gravedigging duty at Margraten and described how his colleagues, most of them African Americans, were “completely traumatised” by the experience.

Djou suggested removing the panel temporarily but retaining it in case Duggan was reappointed as ambassador by a new president in 2029.

But his deputy, Robert Dalessandro, went further. “That panel should go,” he said in a two-line reply. “Frankly, it never should have been there in the first place.”

Djou was removed from his post shortly after the panels were replaced, but Dalessandro remains at the Paris-based organisation as acting secretary.

He told Dutch News he stood by the decision to remove the panel featuring Wiggins’ quote. “I was opposed to it long before the executive order was made and before Trump was elected,” he said.

Sacrifice

“Jefferson Wiggins survived the war and went on to live a long life. There are African American soldiers buried at Margraten who gave the full measure.

“The visitor centre is there to commemorate the soldiers who rest in the cemetery. It’s not our mission to talk about other things. It’s to talk about the service and sacrifice.”

Wiggins’ widow, Janice, said the panel featuring her late husband was intended to be a permanent fixture of the exhibition rather than one of a series of rotating displays.

“The removal of these panels and all reference to Black soldiers is disrespectful to the Black liberators who served and to the legacies their families cherish,” she told Dutch News.

Permanent attention

The removal of the panels sparked strong criticism in Limburg when it was highlighted by the newspaper NRC in November.

The province’s governor, Emile Roemer, and the mayor of Eijsden-Margraten, Alain Krijnen, wrote to the ABMC asking for the story of the Black Liberators to be given “permanent attention in the visitor center”.

They noted that a rotating panel featuring a black soldier, George H Pruitt, had also been removed. Some 172 of the 8,300 servicemen buried in the cemetery are African Americans.

Pruitt is one of four black soldiers included in a series of 15 rotating panels highlighting individual stories, none of which mention segregation or racial discrimination in the US military.

Relatives of soldiers buried at Margraten said the removal of the panels was “dishonouring” their memory and accused the Trump administration of trying to erase them from history.

Some 34 members of Congress wrote to Dalessandro in November asking if the ABMC intended “to erase all exhibits acknowledging the accomplishments of Black servicemen”.

A majority of parties in Limburg’s assembly signed a letter asking the provincial government to explore options to erect a permanent memorial to the Black Liberators.

The parties said they were “shocked” by the removal of the panels, calling the move “indecent” and “unacceptable”.