The Faces of Margraten from May 2-5, 2015
After earlier this year the project The Faces of Margraten, which aims to give a face to all of the 10,023 U.S. WWII soldiers buried in or memorialized at the American Cemetery in Margraten, the Netherlands, was announced, now also the dates for the project are known. From May 2-5, 2015 the crosses and the names on the Walls of the Missing of a several thousand soldiers will be decorated with a personal photo. In this way, Dutch citizens will give a face to their U.S. liberators as a unique tribute to their sacrifices. The most recent count revealed that for 2,644 soldiers a personal photo is available at the moment. The exact program during these days will be announced at a later moment in time.
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| James B. Radmann is one the 10,023 soldiers buried or memorialized in Margraten. |
Since the start of the project, about 700 new photos have been submitted and found. The Foundation United Adopters American War Graves, which organizes the project, continues to encourage the graves' adopters, the soldiers' relatives, and others to submit a photo of a soldier if they are in the possession of one. Together, we will be able to give a face to as many of the soldiers as possible. One can submit a photo, or find more information on how to do so, on the project's website: www.thefacesofmargraten.com.
These 700 photos can be found, together with the other 1,900 photos that had already been archived by the foundation, in the foundation's Fields of Honor - Database. In this free, online-accessible database information can be found about nearly all U.S. soldiers buried in or memorialized at the Margraten Cemetery, together with information and photos of U.S. soldiers buried in the American WWII cemeteries Ardennes and Henri-Chapelle in Belgium. The database is one of the most extensive archives on the soldiers buried there. The Fields of Honor - Database can be accessed through www.fieldsofhonor-database.com.
The project will be realized with support of and in coorporation with others. Recently the local municipality of Eijsden-Margraten and the U.S. Embassy in the The Hague, the Netherlands announced that they will financially support the project. Other than that, Industrial Design students of the Technical University in Eindhoven will be invited to make a design for the photo displays. This coorporation shows how Dutch younger generations have taken up the responsibility to remember those who died for freedom.
The American War Cemetery and Memorial Netherlands is Margraten is one of the 25 overseas American cemeteries maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission and the only American cemetery in the Netherlands. 8,301 soldiers have been buried in the cemetery and the names of 1,722 missing American soldiers have been memorialized on the Walls of the Missing there. The soldiers buried there were, for example, killed during Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands in September 1944 and during the Allied push into Nazi-Germany. Almost 70 years after the end of war, all graves still have been adopted by grateful citizens from all throughout the Netherlands and outside through an Adopt-A-Grave program that has been existent since 1945.
The project The Faces of Margraten is initiated by the Stichting Verenigde Adoptanten Amerikaanse Oorlogsgraven, a Dutch non-profit organization that consists of the Dutch and Belgian adopters of American war graves at American War Cemeteries in the Netherlands and Belgium. In particular, the foundation conducts research to the men and women buried there. The foundation does, however, not maintain any of the "Adopt-A-Grave" programs that exist for various overseas American cemeteries. In case of the Margraten Cemetery, this program is maintained by the Stichting Adoptie Graven Amerikaanse Begraafplaats Margraten (Foundation Adoption Graves American Cemetery Margraten).
