As seen in Remember Us by Robert M. Edsel
The Forever Promise Project is a partnership between two nonprofit organizations: the Monuments Men and Women Foundation and the Foundation for Adopting Graves American Cemetery Margraten (Stichting Adoptie Graven Amerikaanse Begraafplaats Margraten). It was created to realize the original objective of the founders of the Margraten Grave Adoption Program: to connect American families with the Dutch adopters of their fallen loved ones. In 2017, this unique program was designated under UNESCO guidelines as a part of the Dutch National Inventory of Immaterial Cultural Inheritance, to be safeguarded in the same way as historic buildings and cultural sites.
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The Objective
The Forever Promise Project is committed to realizing the original objective of the founders of the grave adoption program by connecting Dutch grave adopters with 100 percent of the next of kin of the nearly 10,000 American heroes buried or honored on the Walls of the Missing at the Netherlands American Cemetery. Through the generosity of donors, there is no cost to anyone participating in this project.
The History
The Foundation for Adopting Graves American Cemetery Margraten formed in February 1945 as a Dutch expression of gratitude to their American liberators. To qualify, each volunteer agreed to adopt and regularly visit a grave and remain in contact with the soldier’s next of kin in the United States. By the second postwar Memorial Day in 1946, 100 percent of the nearly 18,000 graves had been adopted. Even today, 80 years later, there is a waiting list of 700 Dutch citizens hoping to become adopters.
“With all my heart I believe that no one who left a son overseas should doubt the fittingness of his final resting place. That he should have, for time unending, a part of the ground he so dearly bought is supremely right and fitting.”
- General George C. Marshall
Chief of Staff of the United States Army and Chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission
The Cemetery
The Netherlands American Cemetery is a special place of meaning for the Dutch grave adopters just as it is the loved ones of the Americans who are buried there or honored on the Walls of the Missing. No visitor to the cemetery leaves without a sense of the magnitude of the sacrifice of these young American men and women, yet everyone who walks these hallowed grounds is impacted differently.