In Donald Trump's opinion, soldiers who die in battle are suckers and losers. In his selfish egocentric mind, the notion of sacrifice for a higher cause is stupid.
He used those terms to describe dead WHITE American soldiers buried somewhere along the Atlantic Coast of Europe. You see, despite President Lincoln's Emancipation some 100 years before, the US still segregated White and Black soldiers in separate Army units and brigades.
Now imagine what he must think of dead BLACK American soldiers buried somewhere along the Atlantic Coast of Europe. They must be "low IQ" as he often refers to African Americans - he doesn't have any in his administration. He must be the most racist jackass president the country ever had.
Now you can understand why, in the dead of night, quietly, and without the usual fanfare that accompanies his signing these orders with his "bush" signature, he issued an executive order to eliminate a memorial to dead WWII African American soldiers from a US military cemetery in the Netherlands. Trump wants to alter the historical record, so that no one in the future can say that downtrodden and discriminated African Americans were as much patriots as any other white trash idiot from the heartland.
How much racism this man and his gang of white supremacists hold in their hearts is bottomless. I am sad that many African Americans (and other racial minorities like Hispanics, Arabs, Asians, etc.) were fooled by his lies and voted for him. They should have known better; he already tried to discredit the first Black African president this country ever had when he claimed that Barack Obama was not an American citizen. You can tell the contents of a letter from its envelope. Now they know.
================================================
Memorial to Black US Soldiers Who Died in WW2 Quietly Removed
Published: Nov 10, 2025 at 08:59 AM EST
Updated: Nov 11, 2025 at 05:24 AM EST
By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
Plaques commemorating African American soldiers fighting against Nazi Germany in Europe have been taken down from a U.S. military cemetery in the Netherlands.
Approximately 1 million African American soldiers fought in Europe during World War II.
More than 8,200 Americans are buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery in the southern village of Margraten, just east of city of Maastricht. Another 1,700 officially counted as missing have their names displayed at the site, according to the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), the U.S. agency responsible for the Dutch site.
A total of 174 African American soldiers are buried or memorialized at Margraten, according to the Dutch research project, the Black Liberators. It is the only U.S. military cemetery in the country.
Dutch media reported earlier this month two informational panels about African American soldiers in the mid-20th century war had been taken down in the cemetery's visitors' center. A local official who was granted anonymity to speak freely told Newsweek the ABMC did not inform authorities in the Limburg province, where the cemetery is located, of the removal.
Flag bearers of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division, known as Screaming Eagles, at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands, on Septem... | AP Photo/Peter Dejong
A spokesperson for the Black Liberators project separately confirmed to Newsweek on Monday the panels had been taken down and were not currently on display.
It is not clear exactly when the panels were removed. The panels were added to the visitors' center in mid-2024, partly because of pushes from then-U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Shefali Razdan Duggal, the Black Liberators project said. But they were "removed again earlier this summer," the initiative said.
The local official said on Monday they had learned of the information being removed from display the previous weekend. "We have to guess for the reasons," said Theo Bovens, a Dutch lawmaker who also serves as the president of the Black Liberators.
The White House, under President Donald Trump, has cracked down on programs aimed at diversity and inclusion, an attitude echoed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in his reshaping of the Pentagon and the U.S. military. Arlington National Cemetery in March removed references to the history of Black and female service members from its website, and the Pentagon in the same month restored a webpage celebrating U.S. Army Major General Charles Calvin Rogers, a recipient of the U.S. highest military honor and a Black Vietnam veteran, after an outcry at its removal.
The ABMC told Newsweek in a statement that the visitors' center at Margraten had 15 magnetic panels "designed to be removed and rotated throughout the life of the exhibit to highlight as many individual stories as possible."
"Of these, four currently feature African American service members buried at the cemetery," the commission said.
The Black Liberators project said one panel detailed the life of George H. Pruitt, a New Jersey-born telephone engineer who died in 1945 while attempting to rescue a fellow soldier from a river in Bremen, northwestern Germany. He was 23 years old.
The second panel provided information on the "strict policy of segregation" in the U.S. military during World War II and the journey of many soldiers into postwar civil rights movements. The U.S. military officially desegregated in 1948.
"The panel featuring Technician Fourth Class George H. Pruitt is currently off display, though not out of rotation," the ABMC said. Staff at the commission "have developed a schedule for periodic rotation to include new content for visitors," it added.
ABMC took down a panel display back in March featuring a quote from African American soldier 1st Lt. Jefferson Wiggins, the commission continued, after an "internal review of interpretive content" under the ABMC's previous secretary.
The ABMC's response "might explain the removal of the story of Technician Fourth Class George H. Pruitt, even though it was already the last story to be added, it does not explain why the panel highlighting racial segregation was removed," said the Black Liberators project.
The cemetery itself is symbolic of U.S. participation along with Dutch fighters toward the end of the war, and where many people travel to pay their respects, said Kees Ribbens, a senior researcher at NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam.
African American soldiers typically held labor or supporting jobs in the military during World War II, and helped build the Margraten site from late 1944, Ribbens told Newsweek.
Families could then chose whether to leave the remains of their loved ones there or have them returned to U.S. soil when the cemetery was remodeled a few years later, said Ribbens. "People attach a lot of meaning to the fact that the graves are still there."
The Netherlands was officially liberated from Nazi occupation in May 1945, five years after German troops invaded the country. U.S. troops fought there between 1944 and 1945, and the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands describes the south Limburg region as the "most 'Americanized' part of the country."
"The exhibit at the Netherlands American Cemetery honors those military members buried or memorialized at the site regardless of race, creed rank or origin—a direct reflection of the makeup of our cemeteries," said the ABMC.
"We hope that the panels will come back, because of the importance of the contribution of Afro-American soldiers to the liberation of the Netherlands," Bovens told Newsweek. The reason for the removal is less important than the return of the plaques, he said.
Local and provincial authorities are discussing plans for a possible alternative memorial, according to Dutch media.
Update 11/10/2025 at 9:40 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.
Update 11/11/2025 at 4:45 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with a response from the ABMC.
No comments:
Post a Comment