Although the most common image of the Liberation of Europeans from Nazi Occupation 75 years ago is one of joyous celebration, we should not forget that tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians paid for that liberation with their lives. The Dutch certainly haven’t.

Within weeks of the liberation of my father and his neighbors in Maastricht, the US Army began burying its dead in a cemetery outside the village of Margraten. Known today as the Netherlands American Cemetery, it now houses the graves of 8,291 military dead and lists the names of 1,722 of the missing. Like all Allied war cemeteries in western Europe, Margraten’s beautiful park shelters seemingly endless rows of white crosses and stars of David (link to site).

What distinguishes Margraten from other war cemeteries is the way that the Dutch people have cared for it. Right in 1944, when the first bodies were buried there, before the war was even won, local people adopted the graves of American soldiers. Volunteers were given one or more graves to tend with only the most basic information about the deceased: name, rank, home state and, if possible, day of death. They knew almost nothing about the person buried there except that he, or in some cases she, had died in the fight to save them all from the Nazis. That was enough for these Dutch men and women to continue to bring flowers to the grave for the rest of their lives. When the original volunteer died, someone else in the family took over the obligation to tend the grave.

If you look at the website of the foundation that organizes adoptions, you will see that every grave and every name of the missing has been adopted (adoptiegraven-margraten.nl). These soldiers have not been forgotten by the strangers they liberated. Nor are they considered to be distant history. A recent initiative called The Faces of Margraten (thefacesofmargraten.com) has the enthusiastic support of many young people. The Faces of Margraten honors the men and women buried there by displaying their photographs.

In this age of digital photos, that might not sound like much. But these people died in 1944 or 1945, when you took a photo with film and paid to have it developed. So they need to find photos from 1945 or earlier. But first they need to find someone who would still have such a photo. The parents of these men and women are long dead. Many of them were too young to be married or if they were their wives were young enough to remarry and change their names. Surviving sisters may well have changed their last names as well. It is an amazing feat of research that the Faces of Margraten have already found photographs of 6,000 of the men and women buried there. They are hoping to find enough to display 7,500 photographs for the 75th anniversary of the end of the war next May. The photos will be displayed next to the graves May 2-6, 2020.

They need help finding the photos of more of the men and women buried there.  If you’d like to help, you can find more information here.