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In The Netherlands till recently hardly anything was known about the participation of over a miljon African American soldiers in the liberation of The Netherlands nor about the segregated US Army during WW2.
African American soldier were not allowed to fight – apart from only few exceptions. They were part of Quartermaster support companies.
Hundreds of them were assigned with the heavy task of burying death soldiers and civilians in the municipality of Margraten in the South of The Netherland where the US army started to developed September 1944 an American military cemetery.
One of the gravediggers was the African American soldier Jefferson Wiggins, 19 years of age. Sixty five years after these gruesome month at that cemetery dr. Wiggins was invited by the Margraten Municipality. He then found out that no one he met there ever had heard about the strict race segregation in the US Army during WW2.
It is because of this veteran more and more now is know in The Netherlands about the participation of Black American troops at the liberation of their country. He asked oral historian Mieke Kirkels to help him writing his memories of that traumatic time in Margraten.
In 2014 the book Van Alabama naar Margraten – herinneringen van grafdelver Jefferson Wiggins was presented, a year after Dr Wiggins died. Based on new and additional facts from research by Sebastiaan Vonk (MA) and Mieke Kirkels this extended second edition of the book was presented in May 2023 – and an English edition will be presented in 2025.
Listen here to Jefferson Wiggins’s voice.
After the book ‘Kinderen van zwarte bevrijders – een verzwegen geschiedenis was published (Mieke Kirkels, Vantilt 2017) the idea came up to make a digital reading- and textbook: www.blackliberators.nl.
Not long after that the project Black Liberators in the Nederlands followed. The company 51North (digital design produced the digital book including Digischool, an educational part at the website in Dutch as well as in English. Most of the stories in the digital book are based on the books Mieke Kirkels wrote plus new stories and historical facts based on research by co-author Sebastiaan Vonk.
April 20, 2017, the book ‘Kinderen van zwarte bevrijders’ by Mieke Kirkels was published. In the book she writes about the touching hidden history of liberationchildren in The Netherlands with a dark skin color.
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 liberation children of our country were born in Limburg in 1945. About seventy of them had dark skin: their biological fathers were Black American soldiers. From Limburg, service troops mainly provided supplies to the front-line troops, but in the military history of the Second World War, the 900,000 Black Americans who helped liberate Europe are barely mentioned. Often for the first time, eyewitnesses in this book speak about the stationing of the black liberators and the humiliations they suffered at the hands of the white Americans.
The Black Americans were embraced as liberators by the people of Limburg, but the acceptance of the children they fathered was less smooth. These ‘illegitimate’ children of Black liberators were initially seen as exotic or as ‘mission children’ in the white, predominantly Catholic 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 book had ever heard of the liberation army in which their father served, which was segregated by race until 1948. This background of segregation in the American army, which few people in our country are aware of, is also discussed.
Children of Black Liberators describes a moving and largely unknown history, and is illustrated with a large number of unknown photos from the liberation period.
ISBN 978 94 6004 321 5
The book ‘Tekens uit Nepal’ (Signs from Nepal) with illustrations made by students of The Kavre Deaf School in Nepal, shows the world of deaf peoples living in one of the poorest countries in the world.
In Nepal, the taboo on deafness is great, despite the fact that a large percentage of the population is deaf. The future of a deaf child is bad in advance. It is an informative and friendly book that outlines the situation of students of the Kavre Deaf School.
The book contains drawings made during drawing lessons I gave there in 2012.
Publisher: De Boekfabriek, Schiedam
Author: Mieke Kirkels
Illustrations: students Kavre Deaf School
Design: Claudia van der Tuijn
Nederweert through the eyes of Jef Kirkels
The beautiful designed picture book in black and white tells about the village and surrounding areas of Nederweert in the years 1950-1970, the waning days of the final days of the Rich Roman Life, reconstruction and the era of the baby boom generation, photographed by Jef Kirkels (1919-1997).
Kirkels was the manager of the LLTB-Boerenbond and commander of the local fire brigade, but was also known as a very meritorious amateur photographer. Of the thousands of black and white photos he took in the years between 1950 and 1970, several hundred have been selected for this beautiful photo book. The photos are provided with short historical explanations, preceded by a foreword by Gerard Kessels.
ISBN/EAN 978-90-71402-07-4. Edited by: Mieke Kirkels and Alfons Bruekers.
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‘Else Hanöver, war years in Maastricht’ tells the story of Else Hanöver, a young woman, born in nearby German Aachen, who was the secretary of the Maastricht’ mayor before and during the war. The book is based on her biography. Else started the adoption of graves by people in the region.
Else Hanöver, war years in Maastricht tells the story of Else Hanöver, a young woman in Maastricht in wartime.
It is the editing of part of her livestory, written in 2000 on request of her children. It is based on her very precise kept diaries in the years Maastricht was under occupation of Germans and the liberation by the US Army followed on September 13 1944. Else was the mayors secretary in those years. The story shows that country boarders 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 to 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, then mayor of Maastricht, wrote the foreword.
Auteur: 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 also Germans, Russians, Italians and many other nationalities. More than twenty hectares of agricultural land was transformed into a large military cemetery in a very short time. What the construction of the cemetery meant for the local residents, for the 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, you can 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 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) 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 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 the 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 this building. Designed by Van de Broek and Bakema and completed in 1970. …..A tangible memory of a building that no longer exists.
Concept Wytze Patijn Oral history manager Mieke Kirkels
9789079814022
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