More than 3,900 photos found so far
So far, 3,900 photos of U.S. World War II soldiers who have been either buried in or memorialized in the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, the Netherlands have been found. This is a new milestone as the result of continuous efforts to put a face with the names of as many soldiers as possible during The Faces of Margraten tributes. Since the first edition of the tribute in 2015, over 600 additional photos were found. All these photos will be on display when The Faces of Margraten tribute returns to the Netherlands American Cemetery from May 1-5 this year.
Meanwhile, the quest for locating the missing photos of 6,000 soldiers continues both in the Netherlands and the United States. The adopters of the graves in Margraten continue to look for photos of the soldiers whose graves they have adopted. Other than that, various local newspapers in the U.S. have joined the efforts to locate the missing photos, and so did the Stars en Stripes. Also volunteers of the Foundation United Adopters American War Graves, a Dutch non-profit organization that organizes the tribute, continue to conduct research in historical resources, hoping to find more photos. As a result, the number of soldiers to whom we can give a face continues to grow, even 71 years after the end of the war.
The Faces of Margraten is an initiative of the Stichting Verenigde Adoptanten Amerikaanse Oorlogsgraven, a Dutch non-profit organization that is run by Belgian and Dutch adopters of American war graves in Belgium and the Netherlands. The foundation has committed itself to giving a face to all the soldiers buried and memorialized there and in that way to keeping alive the memory to these soldiers. The foundation does not maintain any of the "Adopt-A-Grave" programs for the cemeteries.
