Missing Jewish World War II soldier identified by DNA, reburied at Normandy

Eighty years after being wounded and killed in the Battle of Cherbourg, U.S. 1st Lt. Nathan Baskind was buried with his comrades at the Normandy American Cemetery in France.

The Jewish American officer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was considered missing for decades because his family did not know what happened to him after he landed at Utah Beach on D-Day with the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion.

Baskind was lost in the heat of the Battle of Cherbourg on June 23, 1944. German records later revealed that he was ambushed and shot before being taken prisoner by German forces and sent to a Luftwaffe field hospital. Later that day, Baskind succumbed to his injuries and was buried in a mass grave with 23 Nazi soldiers.

After World War II, the mass grave containing Baskind’s body was combined with another mass grave and moved to the Marigny (Normandy) German War Cemetery.

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In 1957, the American Grave Registry Service attempted to identify Baskind’s remains but was unsuccessful. However, his unit patch, lieutenant’s bars and dog tags were seized. Due to the lack of a definitive identification, the Baskind family was not informed about this matter.

“Nathan Baskind is a unique story, even for us,” Shalom Lamm, co-founder and chief historian of Operation Benjamin, told Fox News Digital.

Operation Benjamin is a nonprofit organization that works to fix the headstones of Jewish American soldiers who were accidentally buried under a cross instead of a Star of David. Lamm explained that some Jewish American soldiers choose to wear other faiths or none at all on their dog tags for a variety of reasons.

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“We were given a kind of intriguing tip from a wonderful genealogist who wasn’t working for us at the time, although he is now, and he said he had come across something that he thought was very unusual,” Lamm said. he said. “He was searching databases of German military cemeteries – people do that – and he said he found the name Nathan Baskind. And he said it didn’t make sense to him because Nathan wasn’t a German name.”

Operation Benjamin took the lead and ran with it, eventually discovering who Baskind was. They quickly realized that he had been considered missing for 79 years and that his family did not know what happened to him. The organization then worked to find Baskind’s next of kin; This person turned out to be his great-niece, author and professor Samantha Baskind.

“I was so surprised when I first heard about Uncle Nate. In fact, when I first got the email from Shalom, I didn’t even believe it was true,” he said.

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Samantha Baskind told Fox News Digital that the lack of information about her great-uncle’s fate is “a jagged wound that runs through our family.”

Operation Benjamin needed permission from several countries, including the United States, Germany and France, to exhume a Jewish American soldier from a mass grave. When the organization first put its case to Brigadier General Dirk Backen at the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund), he initially said he could not help.

Backen revealed to Fox News Digital that he knew about Baskind’s case before Operation Benjamin approached him. He had already asked questions about relocating Baskind’s body, and he denied the request, citing documents from the 1950s that showed previous attempts to identify the body had failed. But Backen reconsidered Operation Benjamin’s request after considering advances in DNA analysis and receiving video showing Baskind’s great-nephew pleading for help.

A tombstone states that Nathan Baskind was buried in France. He received medals for his actions in World War II, and these medals are now in the possession of his great-niece, Samantha Baskind. (Samantha Baskind)

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“Operation Benjamin submitted a video of Professor Samantha Baskind, Nathan B. Baskind’s great-niece, and she asked for our help. How can you say no to that?” Backen recalled this in a conversation with Fox News Digital.

After receiving permission to exhume, a 17-person team of Germans, Americans, anthropologists and volunteers spent three days in December to open the grave by hand. Lamm recalled how the team examined “thousands and thousands of bones” to find one that might match Baskind’s. One important clue was Baskind’s height.

“[He] He was five feet tall, which of course made him perfect for being in a tank. But 6 feet was short even for those days,” Lamm said.

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Burial of World War II soldier 1st Lt. Nathan Baskind at Normandy American Cemetery in 2024. (Operation Benjamin)

Eventually, the team was able to find human remains that showed an extremely high level of DNA match to Baskind.

“We had these small bone samples analyzed in the United States… and before that we had taken DNA samples from Baskind’s descendants, and we found an absolutely amazing match. We found Nathan Baskind,” Lamm said.

Samantha Baskind said they were both “stunned” when Lamm called her and told her the DNA matched. He recalled giving an “incredibly emotional speech” about the discovery. He then had to plan a funeral for his great-uncle, whom he never knew.

“I had to choose a casket and sign documents about how his remains were stored, which is really emotional for me. And amazingly, 80 years after my great-uncle’s death, I am his next of kin and am planning his funeral,” she said.

On June 23, 2024, the 80th anniversary of his death, Baskind was buried at the Normandy American Cemetery with full military honors and in accordance with Jewish law and customs.

Samantha Baskind said seeing her great-uncle buried under the Star of David with her American friends brought a sense of closeness that her family had missed for decades.

“As Nate’s nephew, I’m so proud that we found him and that I was able to help find him and carry his memory forward forever,” Nate told Fox News Digital.

For Backen, playing a role in helping transport Baskind to an American cemetery became more than correcting a historical mistake. He told Fox News Digital that his own great-uncle died in roughly the same area of ​​Normandy a few days after Baskind’s death. He thought about the possibility of two soldiers facing each other in battle and wondered what would happen if they both survived.

“Can they shake hands?” said Backen. “And all I can imagine is, I wish they would do that.”

Operation Benjamin co-founder Shalom Lamm speaks at the funeral of 1st Lt. Nathan Baskind at the Normandy American Cemetery. Nathan Baskind’s great-niece, Samantha Baskind, receives a folded flag in honor of her great-uncle. (Operation Benjamin; Samantha Baskind)

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He also framed the effort to rebury Baskind as part of the post-World War II relationship between Germany and the United States.

“This is about showing our neighbors, our friends, that we’ve chosen a different path now,” Backen said.

Backen, who served alongside American troops in Afghanistan, said that this incident also increased the human cost of the war.

“War is a curse. It is an inconvenience to everyone, even to the winners… I personally believe – and I participated in the war in Afghanistan – that there is no victory in war,” he said.

Lamm said Baskind’s rescue and reburial is a reminder of the sacrifices American soldiers made to defend their country.

“People gave their lives, they gave their entire tomorrow so that we could have better today, and that’s a very, very deep thing,” he said.

Samantha Baskind places a badge next to her great-uncle’s name on the Wall of the Missing at the Normandy American Cemetery. (Samantha Baskind)

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For Samantha Baskind, her great-uncle’s story reflects the often overlooked role American Jews played in defending the United States. He dismissed the “cranks about non-combatant Jews”, stating that his great-uncle “fought and gave up his life for the freedoms of this country”.

“His story shows us that freedoms are never free,” he said.