Menu
Until recently, hardly anything was known in the Netherlands about the participation of over a million African American soldiers in the liberation of the Netherlands, nor about the segregated US Army during WWII.
African American soldiers were not allowed to fight – with only a few exceptions. They were part of the Quartermaster’s support companies.
In the Municipality of Margraten in the south of the Netherlands, hundreds of them were assigned with the heavy task of burying soldiers and civilians at an American military cemetery that the US army had developed since September 1944.
One of the gravediggers was the African American soldier Jefferson Wiggins, 19 years of age. Sixty-five years after those gruesome months at that cemetery, Dr. Wiggins was invited to visit the Municipality of Margraten. He then discovered that none of the people he met there had ever heard about the strict race segregation in the US Army during WWII.
It is thanks to this veteran that so much more is now becoming known in the Netherlands about the participation of African American troops in the liberation of our country. He asked oral historian Mieke Kirkels to help him document his memories of that traumatic time in Margraten.
The book ‘Van Alabama naar Margraten’ [From Alabama to Margraten] which documents the memories of gravedigger Jefferson Wiggins was published in 2014, a year after Dr. Wiggins had passed away. Based on new and additional facts researched by Sebastiaan Vonk (MA) and Mieke Kirkels, the comprehensive second edition of the book was published in May 2023 and an English edition will be published in 2025.
After the book ‘Kinderen van zwarte bevrijders – een verzwegen geschiedenis’ [The children of Black liberators – an untold history] (Mieke Kirkels, Vantilt 2017) had been published, the idea arose to produce a digital reading and textbook: www.blackliberators.nl.
Not long after that the Black Liberators project in the Nederlands followed. The digital design company 51North produced the digital book including Digischool, an educational part of the website in both Dutch and English. Most of the stories in the digital book are based on the books written by Mieke Kirkels plus new stories and historical facts based on research by co-author Sebastiaan Vonk.
The book ‘Kinderen van zwarte bevrijders’ [Children of Black liberators] by Mieke Kirkels was published in April 2017. She writes about the touching untold history of liberators’ children in the Netherlands who have dark complexions.
As children of Black American soldiers, they were all too clearly recognizable as ‘little Americans’ in the then ‘white’ Limburg.
This book tells their story and that of their fathers who served in a strictly racially segregated American liberation army.
The first liberators’ children of our country were born in Limburg in 1945. About seventy of them had a dark complexion: their biological fathers were Black American soldiers. Service troops mainly provided supplies from Limburg to the front-line troops, but in the military history of WWII, the 900,000 Black Americans who helped liberate Europe are barely mentioned. Eyewitnesses often speak for the first time about the stationing of Black liberators and the humiliations they suffered at the hands of white Americans.
The Black Americans were embraced as liberators by the people of Limburg, but acceptance of the children they fathered was less smooth. These ‘illegitimate’ children of Black liberators were initially seen as being exotic or as ‘missionary children’ in the white, predominantly Catholic province of Limburg, but they did not have an easy life later in their youth. Questions about their biological fathers also remained unanswered for a long time: none of the twelve who tell their story in the digital book had ever heard of the liberation army in which their fathers had served, which was racially segregated until 1948. The background of segregation in the US Army, which few people in our country are aware of, is also discussed.
‘Kinderen van zwarte bevrijders’ [Children of Black liberators] describes a moving and largely unknown history, and is illustrated with many unseen photographs from the liberation period.
ISBN 978 94 6004 321 5
The book ‘Tekens uit Nepal’ [Signs from Nepal), illustrated by students of The Kavre Deaf School in Nepal, depicts the world of deaf people living in one of the poorest countries in the world.
In Nepal there deafness is a taboo, despite the fact that a large percentage of the population is deaf. The future of a deaf child is almost hopeless. It is an informative and friendly book that outlines the situation of students of the Kavre Deaf School.
The book contains drawings made during my art classes there in 2012.
Publisher: De Boekfabriek, Schiedam
Author: Mieke Kirkels
Illustrations: students of the Kavre Deaf School
Design: Claudia van der Tuijn
The beautifully designed black and white photo book reflects on the village of Nederweert and its surroundings in the years 1950-1970. Those were the waning last days of prosperous Catholic life, after the reconstruction years and in the era of the baby-boom generation, photographed by Jef Kirkels (1919-1997).
Kirkels was the manager of the LLTB-Boerenbond [Farmers Union] and commander of the local fire brigade, but was also known as a highly accomplished amateur photographer. Of the thousands of black and white photographs he took from 1950 to 1970, several hundred have been selected for this beautiful photo book. The photographs are captioned with short historical explanations, and the foreword is by Gerard Kessels.
ISBN/EAN 978-90-71402-07-4. Edited by: Mieke Kirkels and Alfons Bruekers.
Sold out
‘Else Hanöver, Oorlogsjaren in Maastricht ’ [War years in Maastricht] is the story of Else Hanöver, a young woman born in Aachen, German, who was a secretary to Maastricht’s mayor before and during WWII. The book is based on her biography. Else started the adoption of graves by people in the region during her war years in Maastricht.
It is a rendition of part of her life’s story, written at the request of her children in 2000. It is based on her precisely documented diaries during the wartime years of German occupation in Maastricht, and liberation by the US Army that followed in mid-September 1944. In those day, Else was the mayor’s secretary. The story shows that country borders and family ties do not always coincide, as is evident from the story about her German grandmother, who was forced to move in with them after her home was destroyed during the bombing of Aachen (11 April 1944). Else emigrated to the United States in 1947 and lived in Florida. The oral history project team Akkers van Margraten [Fields of Margraten] came into contact with Else when they were looking for eyewitnesses of the construction of the American cemetery in Margraten. In 1944/1945, Else answered hundreds of letters from relatives of soldiers from the US during the period when the system of adoption of graves was set up. Her friendship with the first American liberator, whom she met on 13 September 1944, is good for a surprising ending to the book. Gerd Leers, the mayor of Maastricht at that time, wrote the foreword.
Author: Mieke Kirkels ISBN/EAN: 9789086801480
In November 1944, the burial of more than twenty thousand victims of the Second World War began on the Margraten Plateau.
They were mainly Americans, but there were also Germans, Russians, Italians and many other nationalities. More than twenty hectares of agricultural farmland was transformed into a large military cemetery in a very short time. What the construction of the cemetery meant for local residents, for landowners, for people who saw the death transports passing by every day, and for those who had to bury the remains of those thousands of mostly young men, can be read in this book.
It contains 41 written portraits, short biographies of ordinary, but sometimes also special people. They are the memories of men and women, white and Black, from villagers to officers, and of soldiers from the US. Even a former German prisoner of war has his say. They all have one thing in common: their memories of that time, more than sixty-five years ago. Memories that have never left them. Never before has a comprehensive picture been drawn of the significance of the construction of the American cemetery for the residents and for those who worked there. The authors Jo Purnot and Mieke Kirkels formed the project team Akkers van Margraten [Fields of Margraten] together with Frans Roebroeks, Eugenie Jansen and Albert Elings. In 2008 and 2009 they collected all these stories and memories and made sure that they were recorded in both this book and in the documentary film ‘Akkers van Margraten’.
Author: Mieke Kirkels and J.H.M.G. Purnot ISBN/EAN: 9789086801466
Portrait of the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology, 1970-2008
A tangible memory of a special building that no longer exists.
On 13 May 2008, the building of the Faculty of Architecture of TU Delft burned to the ground in one day. The oral history book contains personal memories and emotions of people who studied and worked in that building which was designed by Van de Broek and Bakema and completed in 1970. A tangible memory of a building that no longer exists.
Concept by architect Wytze Patijn and Oral history manager Mieke Kirkels
ISBN: 9789079814022
Sold out
In the Netherlands, a small group of biracial citizens have entered their eighth decade of life that had often been puzzling and difficult, but who offer a unique insight into the history of race relations in America.
Though their African American fathers had brought liberation from Nazi tyranny at the end of WWII, they were in a totally segregated American military derived from a racially divided American society.
Decades later, some of their children could finally learn about a father’s identity and the life he had led after the war.
Just one would be able to find an embrace in his arms, and just one would arrive at her father’s American grave after 73 years. But they could now understand their own Dutch lives in the context of their fathers’ lives in America.
Publisher: McFarland, 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1476676937
