‘Freedoms are never free’: A Jewish American soldier buried with Nazis finally laid to rest with US troops
Eighty years after being wounded and dying in the Battle of Cherbourg, U.S. 1st Lieutenant Nathan Baskind was laid to rest with his comrades in the Normandy American Cemetery in France.
The Jewish American officer from Pittsburgh, Pa., was considered missing for decades, with his family not knowing what happened to him after he came ashore on Utah Beach on D-Day with the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion.
In the heat of the Battle of Cherbourg on June 23, 1944, Baskind was lost. 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 wounds and was buried in a mass grave with 23 Nazi soldiers.
After World War II, the mass grave containing Baskind's remains was combined with another one and both were moved to the Marigny (Normandie) German War Graves Cemetery.
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In 1957, the American Grave Registration Service attempted to identify Baskind's remains, but failed. However, his unit patch, lieutenant's bars and dog tag were recovered. The Baskind family was not made aware of this because of the lack of a positive definitive identification.
"Nathan Baskind is a unique story, even for us," Operation Benjamin co-founder and chief historian Shalom Lamm told Fox News Digital.
Operation Benjamin is a nonprofit that works to correct 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 opted to put other faiths or none at all on their dog tags for various reasons.
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"We were given a hint, sort of a curiosity from a wonderful genealogist who at that time did not work for us, although he does now, and he said he had come across something that he thought was very unusual," Lamm said. "That he was going through German databases of military cemeteries — people do that — and he found the name Nathan Baskind. And he said, that didn't make sense to him because Nathan is not 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 had happened to him. The organization then worked to find Baskind's next-of-kin, who turned out to be his great-niece, Samantha Baskind, an author and professor.
"When I first heard about Uncle Nate, I was floored. I didn't actually even believe at the beginning that this was true when I first received an email from Shalom," she said.
Samantha Baskind told Fox News Digital that the lack of knowledge about her great-uncle's fate was "a jagged scar that has run through our family."
In order to get the Jewish American soldier out of a mass grave, Operation Benjamin had to seek permission from multiple countries, including the U.S., Germany and France. When the organization first made its case to Brigadier General Secretary General Dirk Backen at the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund), he initially said he could not help.
Backen explained to Fox News Digital that he knew about Baskind's case before Operation Benjamin approached him. He had already been asked about moving Baskind's remains, and he denied the request based on the 1950s documents that showed previous attempts to identify the body had failed. However, Backen reconsidered Operation Benjamin's request after mulling over the advances in DNA analysis and getting a video of Baskind's great-niece asking for help.
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"Operation Benjamin presented a video from Professor Samantha Baskind, the grand-niece of Nathan B. Baskind, and she asked us for help. How can you say no to that?" Backen recalled in a conversation with Fox News Digital.
Once they had permission to open the grave, a team of 17 people, including Germans, Americans, anthropologists and volunteers spent three days in December hand-exhuming the grave. Lamm recalled how the team went through "thousands and thousands of bones" to find one that could match Baskind. One major hint was Baskind's height.
"[He] was five-foot-five, which made him perfect, of course, to be in a tank. But five-foot-five was short, even for those times," Lamm said.
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Eventually, the team was able to find human remains that had an extremely high-level DNA match to Baskind.
"We had these tiny samples of bone analyzed in the United States... and we had prior to this gotten DNA samples from the remaining Baskind descendants, and we hit an absolutely spectacular match. We had Nathan Baskind," Lamm said.
Samantha Baskind said that when Lamm called her to say that the DNA matched, they were both "stunned." She recalled having an "incredibly emotional conversation" about the discovery. Then, she had to plan a burial for her great-uncle, a man she never knew.
"I had to choose a casket and sign documents about the disposition of his remains, which of course is really emotional for me. And surprising, 80 years after my great-uncle died, I'm the next of kin and I'm planning his burial," 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 tradition.
Samantha Baskind said that seeing her great-uncle buried under a Star of David alongside his fellow Americans brought a sense of closure that her family had been missing for decades.
"As Nate's great-niece, I am so proud that we found him, that I could participate in finding him, and that I can carry his memory forward forever," she told Fox News Digital.
For Backen, playing a role in helping move Baskind to an American cemetery became about more than correcting a historical error. He told Fox News Digital that his own great-uncle died in almost the same area of Normandy within days of Baskind's death. He reflected on the possibility that the two soldiers encountered each other in battle and thought about what would have happened if they both survived.
"Would they be able to shake hands?" Backen said. "And all I could imagine was, I wish they would."
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He also framed the effort to have Baskind reburied as part of the post-World War II relationship between Germany and the U.S.
"It is about showing our neighbors, our friends, that we have chosen a different path now," Backen said.
Backen, who served alongside American troops in Afghanistan, said the case also reinforced the human cost of war.
"War is a curse. It's a malaise to everyone, even for the winners... I personally believe — and I've been to war in Afghanistan — there's no glory in war," he said.
Lamm said that Baskind's recovery and reburial serve as a reminder of the sacrifices that American servicemembers have made in defense of their country.
"People gave their lives, gave all of their tomorrows, so that we could have better todays, and that is something very, very profound," he said.
For Samantha Baskind, her great-uncle's story reflects the often-overlooked role that Jewish Americans have played in defending the U.S. She dismissed "canards related to Jews who don't fight," noting that her great-uncle "fought and gave up his life for this country's freedoms."
"His story shows us that freedoms are never free," she said.