Dutch family has cared for graves of American soldiers for 80 years

Three generations of a Dutch family have been the caretakers of an American soldier’s grave since 1945 — and promise future descendants will do the same.

Ernest Francis Fichtl Jr., from the Little Neck neighborhood of Queens, was killed during one of World War II’s bloodiest European battles and is buried at Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten.

But until recently, his family back in New York did not know that his grave site is lovingly tended to by his adopted family in the Netherlands. And it’s not the only one.

Since the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Margraten residents have honored the sacrifice of the more than 8,000 men and women who perished fighting the German army in the region, which saw some of the war’s bloodiest battles. In many cases, the “adoptions” have carried over three generations.

Sergeant Fichtl, known as “Junior” in his family, was a 20-year-old tank commander when he arrived in southwest Holland in 1944, four years after the Nazis first occupied the region.

He was taken in, along with two other members of the 36th Tank Battalion, 8th Armored Division — known as the “Thundering Herd” — by Adele Steijns and her family.

“Although they stayed only a few months, they became all good friends and, at the time, part of the family,” Cindy Schulteis-Janssen, Steijns’ granddaughter, told The Post.

When the battalion was called to the front line in Rheinsberg, Germany, on March 5, 1945, “There was a lot of loud crying,” said Schulteis-Janssen, who heard the story from her grandmother. “It was very emotional, but they all said they would keep in touch when the war was over.”

But Fichtl and the others never came back.

More than 130 members of his troop were savagely killed in the battle. Steijns’s brothers, who worked at the American cemetery, first heard the news.

Fichtl’s parents, butchers who lived in Little Neck, made the painful decision to leave his remains in the Netherlands.

“They said, ‘We want our son to stay on the soil of the country where he died to provide the freedom that those people deserved,’” said Fichtl’s cousin Ernest Bartol of Mineola, NY.

The Netherlands was liberated two months later, on May 5, 1945.

“Together with her children and grandchildren, my grandmother walked from the village to the beautiful American Cemetery several times each year to honor the fallen heroes,” said Schulteis-Janssen. “After my grandmother died in 2005, my mother took care of the graves. When my mother died in 2023, I take care of the graves.”

Last year, while planning a trip to visit the Netherlands American Cemetery, Ernest Bartol, who is named after his cousin Frichtl, came across an article in The Post about a unique program that allowed local Dutch families to “adopt” individual graves — and discovered his cousin’s resting place was one of them.

“I said ‘My God!’” Bartol told The Post “We were just amazed that something like this existed, that there was a family out there who had taken care of Junior for all these years. We can’t wait to meet them.”

Now the 79-year-old attorney plans to meet Schulteis-Janssen for the first time when he makes the trip to Margraten in May with his cousin Claudia Delin Jensen, 70, who lives in Washington State.

“Mom just idolized her big brother, and when she died in 2019, she called out for him,” said Delin Jensen, who was Fichtl’s niece. “There was an old picture of him in uniform that she asked us to put in her coffin.”

The municipality of Ejsden-Margraten also named a local school in honor ofMajor General Maurice Rose of Denver, Colorado, who commanded the Third Armored Division and, like Fichtl, died in action on March 30, 1945, The highest ranking Jewish military office to die in combat during the war, Rose is buried at Margraten.

Locals have ensured that none of the American soldiers buried there will ever be forgotten. As one elderly local resident notes in a video on the cemetery’s website, “When I pass away, I told my daughter, ‘I want our soldier to stay in the family.’”