Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery
Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery in the city of San Antonio in Bexar County, Texas. Administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, it encompasses , and as of 2014, had over 144,000 interments. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. History. Although the Army post in the area was established in 1875, and construction of Fort Sam Houston began the following year, no burials were made in the area that is currently the cemetery until 1926. In 1931 were added as an  addition to San Antonio National Cemetery. In 1937, the addition became a National Cemetery in its own right, renamed Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. In 1947 several other forts in Texas, including Fort McIntosh, were closed and their cemetery interments were transferred to Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. Interred at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery are 140 Axis prisoners of war (POWs) from World War II who died in captivity. 133 are German, 4 are Italian, and 3 are Japanese. These POWs were disinterred from various Texas prisoner of war camps and reburied at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery . Among these POWs is Hugo Krauss, a German murdered by fellow German POWs at Camp Hearne in 1943. When originally interred, these graves were isolated from the American graves. Two gravestones marked with swastikas were replaced on December 24, 2020. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation had demanded their removal in May 2020, but the Veterans Administration (VA) resisted on the grounds that they were historical. The VA resisted until Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Congressen Will Hurd (R-TX23) and Kay Granger (R-TX12) put pressure on them.