NIJMEGEN, the Netherlands — When Henny Meijer was 2 years old, his hometown was liberated by American soldiers. Hearing the commotion on the street, his 8-year-old brother ran to greet them with a neighbor — a woman who was handing the Americans orange flowers — when a soldier threw himself on the boy.

Only after the soldier got up did Mr. Meijer’s brother see why. The woman with flowers was dead, hit by shrapnel from an artillery shell. “You have to realize what a nasty time it was,” Mr. Meijer, now 72, recalled in an interview. “It was a world without any justice.”

His brother is no longer alive, but Mr. Meijer has devoted much of his own life to preserving the memory of that time, so that future generations will never repeat it. The role the Americans played holds a special place not only for him, but for the town itself, and it, too, has sought to commemorate their part in an equally special way.

Last year, Nijmegen completed a showpiece bridge connecting the old and new parts of the rapidly growing community, which today numbers about 170,000, straddling the Waal River, near the German border.